Children of the Storm: Apprentice
by Father Vengeance
Summary: Kate and Rick opened a door. Shared secrets. But the next step in coming together may prove more difficult than that first leap of faith. As the nor'easter 'Harbinger' races destructively towards NYC, they'll have a narrow window available to hunt down what may be the most prolific killer in the city's long, bloody history. Case and character story. T for language and violence.
1. Chapter 1

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **7:32 AM, Montauk, NY**

Autumn embraced the approach of Halloween. It went so far as to bring its own costume.

Most of October had been pleasantly average, but over the past two days the season had donned a mask that sported a serrated smile of wintry fangs. Monday's temperature was slated for a high in the mid-forties, but dawn arrived during the two-hour drive from the city without so much as a glint of sunlight escaping the overcast. It was a dismal day to be anywhere doing anything responsible.

Detective Katherine Beckett found the southern fork of Long Island's tip to be no exception.

An offshore wind was tearing out towards the Atlantic at a furious twenty-five miles per hour as if utterly fed up with land and its shenanigans. The forcefulness of it threatened the bun her hair was pinned into and flung the drape of her Burberry overcoat as she walked. Buffeting gusts and the modest two-inch heels of her boots made for an awkward march across the beach.

 _Should've left them in the car. I should've left the rest of me there too, damn it._

Desire had overridden reason. _Go figure_. She had slipped while clambering down the steep path cut into the sandy bluffs which formed the backdrop for this blotch of coastline. Felled by gravity with both to-go cups of coffee becoming casualties. It was by a very slim margin she hadn't ended up wearing them.

The tumble had effectively soured an already dubious morning.

Turtle Cove wasn't exactly a tourist spot, hence the lack of easy access, but it was a semi-popular haven for local fisherman and surfers. On such a day as this was shaping up to be, the latter were sure to rule; the usually sedate cove was being brutalized by waves cresting between six and a fearsome nine feet.

The only figures willing to brave the near-freezing morning were a few people-shaped blobs in the water and a pair onshore standing at the fringes of an illegal campsite. Pale streamers of smoke wafted from the charred remains of a fire-pit. They were cut apart in the wind almost immediately above the blackened coals.

The wide-open stretch of coastline threatened the grasp Kate's belly had on a meager breakfast. There was nowhere to hide. Easy sight-lines for a half-mile in three of the four principle directions. If anyone wanted a second shot at her, it would be difficult to find a more secluded place to stage it.

Beckett grit her teeth and advanced. At first, each exhale through her nose sounded as though she'd been running for miles. It calmed as she progressed, but the skittering of her pulse was less obedient. Control was still difficult to wrest from PTSD. It was like alternative lengths of wiring had been threaded throughout her body and brain. Therapy had done much to reset the breaker. Emotion and thought zapped along their rightful currents. But she was still capable of carrying signals to an instant, mindless hysteria. Capable and too keenly aware of it.

Closing the distance revealed the pair ashore to be young women. Both were clutching wool blankets around their forms, legs and shoulders otherwise bare.

"Hey," Beckett volleyed as she closed within a dozen feet.

The duo turned to look at her. Both appeared to be in their early to mid-twenties, both wearing bikini tops and shorts beneath their makeshift shawls. The one on the left was a drop-dead gorgeous blonde who stood a tall and leggy 5'10". The other was a brunette, also pretty and a head shorter. Neither seemed fazed by the sudden arrival of company. "Hey," the latter returned by way of greeting, and her friend offered a polite token of a smile.

 _Thoroughly stoned_ , Kate added to her summary after noting telltale indicators.

"You a cop?" the blonde asked.

Beckett frowned and looked herself over. Decadently expensive coat, charcoal-hued slim-fit sweater, designer jeans, and admittedly knock-off but still cute calf-length boots. "You're kidding me."

"We saw you in your car the first time you drove by. Too fugly to be anything but official. No offense."

"Oh, thank God. None taken then."

"Are we in trouble?"

"For the illegal campsite, making me shiver just looking at you, or the wake-and-bake?" She shook her head afterward and showcased a wan smile to set them at ease. The pair giggled. Combined with their blankets and ill-suited attire, it made them both look terribly young and vulnerable.

The blonde said, "I'm Kally, and this is Dina."

"Kate. Nice to meet you. Listen, I'm actually here looking for someone. Richard Castle? I stopped by his place and there was a note on the door that said he'd be here." Technically the note had been left for his housekeeper, Genie, but she didn't see the need to go overboard by sharing that.

"Dunno 'im," Dina said, and it came readily enough to have the ring of truth.

The other girl shook her head as well, but then lit with a flicker of realization. "Oh, wait. She means Sway, Deen. Sorry," she added for Kate's benefit. "People pick up their monikers in this scene," a couple digits pointedly vaguely towards the furious ocean, "and those stick better than anything homegrown."

A pinging of curiosity arose and Kate heard herself ask, "Do either of you, uh, know him well?" Curiosity—not doubt. That's what she told herself and brooked no argument.

The blonde shrugged in her blanket which set it to slipping down her well-tanned arms. "Nah. Not that he's a bad guy or anything, don't get me wrong. Maybe it's the age gap and all—Sway doesn't really socialize with the usual crowd here."

The brunette grinned and gave an indelicate little snort from the back of her throat. "Yeah," she said with a nudge of an elbow at her companion's middle, "and it's not like some of us haven't tried to include him."

"Dina!" the other yowled. "Shut _up_."

"Wha'? He's only, like, forty-something, right? That's no biggie. Summer was very kind to him. Mmm-mmm."

Beckett's gaze jerked involuntarily towards the water where the surfers were visible. Two of them were sitting up straddling their boards, bobbing in place at a fair distance from one another. A third was cutting his way across a breaking wave. None of them struck her as familiar, but they were a good stretch from shore.

" _Anyway_ ," Kally drawled with a squint at her fellow, and then looked at Kate, "he's out there too, yeah. That's him on the far left, marking the hazards for Goose."

Once it was pointed out, Beckett could see the dispersal for what it was. The pair awaiting their turn were drifting at roughly parallel positions with about fifty yards between them. Both were nearby to jutting rocks that were only visible between waves. The unobstructed shoreline between them, though significant, seemed as narrow as a tightrope given the punishment waiting if the gap was missed. As she was watching, the guy currently riding—Goose, she presumed—was swallowed up under the curl of frothing sea foam at the wave head. The thunder of its impact into the sea made her cringe on his behalf.

"Brutal," Kally sympathized, but her tone was business-like.

The guy who fell surfaced within a handful of moments, safely distant from the rocks. He waved off Castle, who'd started paddling his way, and gave an all-clear in the form of a waggled shaka.

"Classy," Kally continued in succinct commentary and nodded in approval.

"This bitch is really rolling," Dina muttered with an encompassing look over the cove. "Goose isn't ready for swells like these. Your boy's up, Kate," she added with a hand clutching her blanket rising to point. Beyond them, the rotation shifted and the next surfer was paddling farther out to sea. Even with Castle having been pointed out to her though, there wasn't enough clarity to be certain. As if privy to her thoughts the brunette observed, "It's easy to pick him out of a lineup, especially this time of year. Sway doesn't bag it."

Beckett's eyebrows soared. "Excuse me?"

"He doesn't—oh. Right. Um, he doesn't wear a wet-suit."

"Oh. He's not my boy, by the way. I mean, man. We work, er, used to work together." Beneath the words lay a sheltered yearning that both corrections were a mistake on her part. _Another mistake_. Thankfully, neither of the young women were disposed to go digging for underlying meanings.

"He says he doesn't like anything between him and the sea," the blonde tacked on instead, lagging a little behind in the conversation, and then sighed with patient longing. "Suits me. No pun intended."

Dina giggled. "Summer was _very_ kind." Only a second later she squinted with sudden seriousness and leaned forward. "Ah, crap. Kally, look'it your tourist."

"Stop calling him that. Boomer's—oops. Well shit."

Beckett turned as well, watching as the other surfer who had been waiting also began paddling towards the break-line, apparently out of turn. Goose, laid prone on his surfboard, was paddling back towards their general area. He seemed to be trying to flag his friend down, but without success.

"Do something, Kally!"

The blonde's lips pursed and spread in a plump line of sedate disapproval. "Like what? Smoke signals? He's already moving now. There's nothing we can do about it."

"That paddlepuss is gonna get smeared, by Sway if not those trips."

Kally shrugged one bare shoulder. "I told him to stay in the tent until it calmed some. Let 'im learn."

It seemed like their concern would prove unnecessary at first. Both men turned on what the girls deemed a seven-footer and popped up well apart from one another. It was surprisingly easy to get lost in watching Castle move out there. Truth be told, the act in and of itself only served to make him less recognizable; he'd never mentioned the hobby before. The author wove a sinuous trail across the wave that alternated here and there with swift, almost elegant little turns against it.

"I could watch that all day," Dina remarked.

"Carves a wave like a Thanksgiving turkey," Kally agreed. She pointed as if Kate wasn't already watching and explained, "That little backward cut he makes when he's pumping for speed? That's where he got his name. Everyone does it, but not the same way. Most people work a hard slash. It's downright surgical at the pro level where speed really counts. But your boy there more glides through the water, like a lover rather than a fighter."

Dina giggled again and her friend, seeming surprised by her own choice of words, mantled a light pink.

Beckett was surprised she had enough shame to do so. "He's not _my_ —

The collision between both surfers happened fast. Kate didn't even notice where the other one had come from. All three women jerked in surprised unison, watching as the pair tumbled head over heels and were promptly rolled by the wave. Another pounded in mercilessly after it, and then a third.

"Oh shit," Dina fretted, dropping her blanket, but paused in the act of stepping towards the shore when someone surfaced.

Beckett squinted, her heart thumping hard again, but it was an unrecognizable blob of a person at that distance. Then even that much vanished under the next wave. Instinct _flared_ , seeking to propel her forward like a load being shot from a cannon, but God, the sudden tension of anxiety alone made her chest ache. Swimming for long against waves like those was still beyond her capability.

"Come on," Kally groaned and pressed her fists against her stomach while her blanket also fell to the sand.

"There!" Dina spouted moments later, pointing to their left. Both men were visible. They had been propelled towards the shore fast, thankfully in the gap between the rocks. The young women hurried down the shore towards them and Kate followed along as hastily as she could in her boots.

Castle became recognizable as the distance lessened. _Yeesh_. That is, he was and wasn't. 'Summer was kind' Dina had said. That was no exaggeration in the spirit with which the observation had been made. During the five months that they had been apart, the writer had carved more than waves. He was dragging the other surfer by the stretchy scruff of his wet-suit, hauling him towards the shore while the poor guy coughed and sputtered.

Beckett's hazel orbs snagged on the bulging bicep of the arm doing the hauling. They danced across different kinds of swells at the abdominal rack, hard and wet above his black board shorts, and on up to pectoral meat wrought into steely shelves and a glistening valley. Every inch of him was still summertime bronze. Dark bristles, a few full days' worth, marred the view of features that had likewise slimmed.

Castle dropped his burden with an unceremonious splash into the knee-deep water nearer to shore and kept moving sluggishly onward without so much as a backward glance. No gratitude needed or wanted apparently.

The girls had stopped ahead still some distance from the pair. Beckett did the same, compelled into cessation as her eyes roved over her partner's form.

Boomer, the guy resembling the catch of the day, rose laboriously. He was similar to the girls' ages, mid-twenties maybe, with a lean swimmer's build. "Hey!" he fired at Castle. "Get your own fuckin' wave, bro!" The next moment he flew at his rescuer, slamming both palms into the other's back in a shove that stumbled Castle a few steps forward.

Beckett tensed within but hesitated to interfere.

Richard turned slowly, as stoic as the morning was grey. The lack of reaction was somehow more unsettling than anger might have been. His opponent seemed to think so too because he didn't try anything else during the brief stare-down that ensued. Rick turned without a word and sloshed back out towards the sea. A long orange and white surfboard was pulled out of the waves. He carried it back to its owner, looked Boomer square in the eye, and snapped it in half over his right knee.

The sound was like a gunshot on the air.

Beckett and the duo nearby twitched at the report. Dina murmured a breathy, "Fuck."

It was barely audible above the surf, but she heard Castle say, "Drop in on me again and it won't just be the board to feel the consequences." He thrust the halves into the younger man's chest and turned ashore. Boomer didn't follow him with anything more than his eyes, which were wide at first, then sheepish, and at the last somewhat put-out as he regarded his shattered ride.

"See?" Kally asked quietly, with surprising seriousness. "There's no better teacher than experience."

"He didn't ask to be—shouldn't _have_ to be," Dina replied, frowning.

The blonde walked on ahead. "Boomer, what the fuck?" she screeched and started kicking at the water, splashing the shaggy-haired surfer. "What was that? I told you how this works!"

Her victim lifted his broken board like a shield to fend off the watery assault and then the slapping of the young woman's hands when she went right out into the waves to get at him. "Alright already!"

"Ah, young lust," Dina observed dryly. "Looks like Goose has had enough out there too. Good. Thank Sway for me, would you, Kate?"

"Uh, yeah, sure. See ya, Dina." She watched the group a moment longer before switching to the broad back of the man she'd come looking for. His shortboard was being swept inexorably in by the tide a little further along. Kate half jogged after him, still mentally replaying the scene in her mind.

Castle stopped ahead of her, but she closed within a handful of feet before realizing as much and jerkily doing the same. He turned at the sound of her approach, frowning at first, surely expecting more trouble.

The expression faded swiftly, gone as if it had never been. For a moment, she found wide-open glimpses of the cerulean skies denied thus far that morning. "Beckett?"

* * *

 **A/N** : Hello again. Welcome. I have a few quick starting notes.

First, this story is (as the date implies) an AU set in the Season 4 slot. It assumes that Kate took a bit of extra time to at least begin addressing her PTSD before returning to work (I don't plan to dwell on that subject at great length).

Second, this piece is technically a continuation of the mythology already established in Secret (a Season 2 finale AU). It is **not** necessary to have read that story first. I will be reintroducing the major deviations I made from canon in that story as we go. This tale (and any that might follow) is meant to stand on its own. Having stated that, I'll add this: it's a full-length story, not a collection of related one-shots. There is an intended pace at which things unfold and become clear. For now...imagine Caskett as they were in the actual early-to-mid Season 4, hopeful and unobstructed, but with more certitude regarding one another.


	2. Chapter 2

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **7:55 AM, Montauk, NY**

Kate's eyelids betrayed her with a droop to half-mast upon hearing those two syllables trembled by that familiar timbre. _Mmph._ It had been one-hundred-and-fifty-four days since the last time she heard her name emerge from those lips. Amidst the pain and terrible silence of recovery, a number like that can feel like a lifetime.

It took Castle a few seconds to process her, to devour her with those kill-me-now blue eyes. His fingers spasmed at his sides and curled, but not into fists. Within a handful of long seconds, his gaze went from widened with surprise to being narrowed by a smile that halted her breathing in its tracks.

The greeting tumbled out of her mouth unbidden, riding a high, soft note. "Hey."

"'Hey'," he repeated and chuckled deeply. "Cool customer as always, detective. Wow." The man's lips held the end of the vowel sound, and then—blam!—swept back into their grander curve. "How are you?"

Beckett had expected anger after so lengthy a silence between them, resentment maybe, but he looked thrilled. Buffaloed by the surprise, but unquestionably pleased. That was the best news she'd received in months. "Better," she lofted. A tentative willingness to believe her own eyes pushed her lips outward into a radiance that matched his. She buried her hands in her coat pockets to keep from fiddling.

"Much," he confirmed with a lift of his eyebrows and a slim nod. Even a passing comparison to the last time he saw her stole some of the wattage from his expression. It returned just as quickly. "Wow. I-I'm sorry. I thought my mind was..." He fluttered his fingers near his left temple instead of concluding. He'd thought she was a figment of his imagination running wild. "You, uh, have me reeling here."

"Likewise," Beckett confirmed, but her third one-word reply in a row elicited an internal wince. _Jeez. Did I get a contact high from that campsite or what?_ "Uh, how about you? You've been well? You look...y'know, well." _Ugh!_ If she had come to the beach outfitted with a shovel and pail she would have gladly dug a more literal hole in which to bury herself. Maybe it didn't come across as foolish as she feared. Castle's mouth didn't relinquish its joy for even a minimal notch of mockery.

"Thank you. I've been okay, yeah." He looked past her briefly, blinking distractedly, and lofted one broad palm in a wave.

Turning at her waist revealed the two other surfers and the girls headed back to their camp. Right. There was still the rest of the world spinning around them, wasn't there? _Cool._ When she faced forward again, he was finishing a determined evaluation of her figure. _Oh?_ A lick of heat stirred low in her core but fizzled quickly. He wasn't looking for the pleasure of it. Seeking reassurance. _Oh._ The detective felt the warmth of her scars with more certitude than either truly imposed.

"Walk with me?" Castle invited. He canted his head to indicate the beach farther along where his board lay. Beckett answered by keeping pace beyond the reach of the seafoam dispersing across the sand with its sibilant melody. She was all too aware of his unrelenting attention as they went. "Look at you," he murmured deeply, keeping her pulse at a steady gallop. "Goodness, but it is a difference. You look strong again. A little thin," he stipulated, for which she shot him a look that made him grin, "but otherwise one hundred percent. By appearances alone, I could almost believe nothing had happened."

"Thanks. It's taken a lotta work." Beckett's right hand dallied with a loose tendril of hair. She twisted it, worried it, and swiftly tucked it behind her ear when he noticed. "It's still kinda tight," she added, shifting the heel of her palm to the valley between her breasts, "but physical therapy almost has me back to a full range of motion."

"Doesn't this cold dampness aggravate that?"

"Maybe a little. The scar tissue is still taking some getting used to. The way it pulls sometimes and aches." Kate rubbed at the central site unconsciously while saying so. "If it's hot outside, they feel cold. This morning it's vice versa." His attention held her steadily. Interest tempered by a shadow of unspoken compassion.

She stopped as the author bent to retrieve his board. It was a six-footer, half white and half blue along the vertical with a squared tail and a single blue fin. He reeled in the leash and noted, as she did, that the clasp which affixes to the surfer's ankle had been torn amidst the plunge and rolls he'd endured. He let it fall and wedged the board under his right arm, then glanced left to her. "I'm parked up top along the roadside. You too?"

"Yeah." They set off towards the bluffs together.

"You could've waited for me up there in your car, you know. I wasn't planning on being out here for long."

"I could've," she agreed. He stared at her for a beat in the wake of her clipped reply. She gazed back until it was clear that her meaning had sunken in; his smile unfurled again, pleasantly surprised, but already gaining confidence. "I wasn't even sure how to get here at first," she added at length as they walked. "I ended up over at the lighthouse. The guy working there helped me find the right path. Mid-sixties, full head of white hair, and what I suspect is an illegally modified wheelchair."

"It really flies," Rick acknowledged with a quivering of his shoulders. "Henry Calloway. He's a good man."

"A bit pushy in my opinion. He made me a breakfast bagel—wouldn't take no for an answer. Actually, I don't recall being able to squeeze in a 'no'. He's silver-tongued."

"He's the source of my best seafood recipes, and he, ah, certainly has a tale or two worth sharing with the right audience."

The writer didn't mention it outright, and so Kate didn't expound on the history there. Henry was the one who'd found Rick many years previous, wandering along the side of Montauk Highway alone and blood-soaked. Six-years-old and fresh from a cave of horrors, from the clutches of serial killer Llewellyn Matthews. The energetic old keeper hadn't mentioned any of that during their visit. Kate knew his role because she knew the case. By then the details were almost as deeply ingrained as those of her mother's.

Soon enough they reached the narrow footpath cut into the slope of the bluff, which demanded full attention. Waist-high stalks of pale beach grass stood in patches upon the slope. They chorused unintelligible whispers and bent longingly north. Kate went first at Rick's nod of behest since he was lugging the board.

"Were you waiting long for me to come in?"

"No." She paused while hauling herself up a sharper dip. "I'd arrived only a few minutes beforehand."

"Ah. I assumed you'd been sitting. Your butt's all sandy."

Thankfully, he couldn't see her chagrined expression and wasn't likely to have heard her huff of private amusement. Her own tumble that morning had been far less humorous until he got his hands on it. "Five months," she observed dryly, "but you still know how to flatter me, Brute."

A rumbling chord of quiet humor strummed in his throat. "And that's still a horrible nickname, Allie."

The reply made her smile, but also sent her thoughts miles away. She came back to present sharply when the ground shifted, softened, and gave sickeningly under her right foot. "Oh sh—" she was falling before she could determine what had gone wrong, before she could even get that hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. The backward momentum was arrested equally abruptly by a hand planted squarely at her backside. She blinked, poised neatly in an almost sitting position with her legs out straight and the toes of her boots dug into the bank. The woman swallowed thickly. A slight turn to look at Castle revealed only the plunge below.

Her companion sounded like he was trying not to laugh. "This is a first. Seeing you fall, I mean. Well, also touching your—"

"Shut it," Beckett interrupted mildly and kicked viciously at the hillside despite the awkward angle. "I paid my dues coming _down_ this fucker. It has to gimme grief going up too?" He did chuckle at that. "Put me upright before I charge your hand with a misdemeanor."

With a slow and steady push from him she was returned to solid footing on the bank. They completed the ascent without further incident. Looking down the bluff from above though...

She gulped again while replaying the near-miss in her head. "I could've broken my leg. Or my damn neck."

He looked backward too but only shrugged. "It's not so high. Less than twenty feet."

"Steep though. It wouldn't take much to get hurt at that angle." He didn't answer. She looked over to find him studying her like he used to. Like only he could. If it had been five years instead of months she would have remembered that peculiar quality. No one else looks at her in precisely the same fashion. "Thanks."

Her companion shook his head in an easy dismissal of gratitude. "Are you more aware of your body now? Its potential frailty or limitations?"

Beckett moistened her lips, set to tell him to mind his own beeswax, but found herself candidly replying, "Somewhat. I'm not afraid exactly. But at times I feel, um, hyper-aware, I guess? Of the time that would be lost if I needed to heal again like I did recently."

She walked in step with him as they approached a yellow Range Rover parked along the wide shoulder of the road. The automobile was a charming splotch of brightness against the bleakness of the sea and sky. Her sedan was parked behind it and a bit farther along was an old, white, wood-paneled VW van with a host of surfboards atop.

"You've always been aware of how easy it is to lose what matters."

"To death, sure," Beckett confirmed, watching as the other used a few bungee cords to secure the shortboard onto the sports rack atop the SUV. "But death is over and done with quickly. Infirmity..." She glanced right to the vista beyond and smoothed the sleeves of her coat with the opposite hands, chilled from the inside. "All you can do is lie there and watch everything pass you by."

A blur of motion drew her attention back as Rick was tugging on a red and black fleece pull-over. Her gaze slipped and fell down the musculature of his trunk and hit every tensed ridge along the way. Fine, small hairs bleached almost blonde by the sun gave way to the more concentrated, dusky trail connecting his navel to the low-slung waistline of his shorts. Her lower lip dimpled beneath the clench of her teeth. The article was tugged down into place without her being nabbed in the act.

"I know living is learning and all that, but I wish you didn't have to carry the burden." It didn't sound like pity. That was a welcome change of pace. Rick used his fingers to comb ruffled hair back from his brow. Some of it remained erect in a few boyish tufts. It looked shorter than last she'd seen it. Hers had grown longer. _Different pages, per usual._ "Though, speaking for myself," Richard continued mildly, "it certainly didn't feel like I was passing you by." The implication being that he felt fixed in place during her absence. Waiting for her return or a simple phone call. Something. Anything. As rebukes go, that was the gentlest Beckett could've hoped for.

It still hit her like a sledgehammer to the chest.

Her voice was tight when she forced the words out. "Are you upset with me? It's okay to be. I mean, ugh, obviously it's okay to be. You're entitled..." She brought a hand up and smooshed a couple fingers into the corners of her eyes in mute frustration. "I would understand if you were."

God, the smile he flashed her. "Uh, thanks. It was frustrating at times, sure. But you told me what to expect before you'd even left the hospital. I figured then that a length of radio silence was no idle threat."

"Still," she issued, frowning uncertainly and hugging herself tighter. "It took longer than I expected. I'd be pissed."

"Look at yourself, Beckett. I'm...very proud." He looked away while saying so, and then back again as though wondering if that was okay to share. _Oh God, you betcha._ "It wasn't easy," her companion went on to concede, "not for anyone, but I wouldn't imagine that compares to what you were dealing with. I did some reading. Spoke with friends who practice medicine and a few people at the 12th. Not about you specifically," he adds hurriedly, which was some relief even if the questions he was likely to have asked would be plain as day to their colleagues for their relevance to her. "They helped me understand what you would be dealing with. That made a difference. Uh, anyway, seeing you now, like this, seems proof like no other that you chose the right way to go about it."

 _Breathe, Katie._ She did, deeply, and the labor involved was unfortunately obvious.

Castle's brow furrowed. "You were really bracing for the worst, huh?"

"Yeah," she croaked.

"It's behind you now," he assured with a slight return of his smile. She'd have given almost anything to believe that. "Let's get out of the cold. Will you follow me back to the beach house? We can talk there. I assume it's more than just a reunion that brings you out this far."

He was correct. She had completely forgotten until he mentioned it.

A slight wince accompanied the reluctant confirmation, "There's more, yeah."

Castle didn't seem off-put by an ulterior motive for the visit. "You could've called," he suggested kindly. "I only rode out here early this morning, and I'd planned to return to the city by midday."

"I know. I spoke to Martha."

He arched his eyebrows in surprise. "Last night you mean?" She nodded and he stared again, bemused before the realization sank in. Then he smiled, leaning a hip against the jeep as he regarded her. "Wait, so, Detective Beckett specifically wanted to see me today, hrm? Not just that, but wishes to share a long drive back to the city with me too?" She nodded again, matching his grin. "Well, well," he rumbled, "color me flattered."

Beckett huffed an amused exhale, but it was a clipped sound broken off at the end by the weight of gratitude. "I'm glad you understand. So fucking much," she expelled in a relieved rush. The veracity was almost too much to contain with words. Almost a warmth threatening to gather in her eyes, which was ridiculous, but seeing him again was going so much better than she'd allowed herself to imagine. It wasn't possible to be unaffected by such a display of faith and patience. "I wasn't lying. It would've been okay to've been mad. B-but having you on my side is..."

She looked up again at the curl and reassuring squeeze of his hand on her shoulder. "It's our side, Kate, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else." Hearing her first name on his lips again, like the waves beyond, reverberated through her like a distant peal of thunder. It made her teeth clench with a powerfully charged receptiveness.

Beckett answered with something rarer still: she lunged forward and hugged him.

He hesitated for an instant with his arms awkwardly aloft at either side. "I'm wet."

She hummed her amusement. "Color _me_ flattered."

"Filthy," he accused and rumbled a brief chuckle. Those strong limbs swallowed her up. It wasn't painful, but tight enough that in the brief stillness to follow she gradually became aware of the becalmed cadence of her heart. His palm smoothed her back and slid upwards to curl contentedly at the base of her neck.

By then it had been almost four weeks since returning to the city. Five days since returning to the precinct. Time in which she'd reconnected with friends and colleagues, begun settling into a tense norm with her new Captain, and continued spilling the darkness within to Dr. Carter Burke. _All that painstaking progress…_

None of that was suddenly rendered less meaningful by comparison.

But it took being in Richard Castle's arms again to feel as though she'd finally made it home.


	3. Chapter 3

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **8:17 AM, Montauk, NY**

 _You're being ridiculous, Katie._

That was true. Even so, her already halting momentum stuttered in the doorway of the master suite before she ducked her head and slunk inside.

The poor excuse for daylight was further disadvantaged. It shone in narrow slits at half-closed blinds, too weak to brighten much of anything. Rich, dark hardwoods stood in congregation along the room's outer circumference: two dressers, armoires, a desk, and curio cabinet. A gorgeous black marble plinth held a bronze bust of Edgar Allan Poe. Unlike the loft, the walls bore paintings instead of prints. A grim vanitas still-life by Pieter Claesz depicted, among other objects, a writing quill and skull. The male facial portrait by contemporary artist Andrew Salgado was somehow chilling. Deep, dark pastels and the way some were frozen dripping down the canvas... She wondered if it was done after the painter's homophobia-fueled assault a few tears ago. She worried about why it had appealed to her partner enough to purchase.

The shower was running in the en suite bath. Brighter, clean light poured out of the half-sealed portal to pool in a rectangle upon the hardwood floor. _Tempting to follow that radiant roadway._ Tendrils of steam licked along the borders of the door like exaggerated fingers crooked and beckoning to her.

 _Jeez._ Kate turned her back to it and came face-to-furniture with the king-sized bed. _Jeez!_

In what remained their most deliberately intimate moment to-date, it was there she'd coaxed the author to sleep last time she'd visited. He'd stared almost blankly forward, hardly seeming aware while the detective had stripped them both down to nearly nothing. There was no lust in the act, only dire needs to comfort and connect. A few intermittent swoops of his lashes were all that had greeted her touches. She'd guided him under the covers and slid in after. The full-length shiver of welcome that had emerged from him when she'd tucked her bare back into the cove of his torso and arms was still vivid. Powerfully so. The recalled warmth and breadth of his palm nestled between her breasts was difficult to breathe around.

In the grip of the memory, Kate thought to herself, perhaps a bit selfishly: _Thank goodness I did that. Thank God Rick let me do that. He got to see me, feel me, before the scars._

The cessation of the shower went completely unheeded. It was the greater bloom of light and a sudden influx of scents that alerted the detective to no longer being alone. Faint eucalyptus rode upon the humid gust, and woodsy aromas; balsam maybe and something similar that was less discernable.

"Beckett?"

 _Kate_ , the woman thought with a private sigh and turned at the waist to view him over her left shoulder.

An uncertain reception dwelt in her host's features. A partial smile was stymied by fine lines of confusion at his forehead. A towel wrapped his waist, clasped shut in the grip of his right hand. For a few long seconds, staring was all either seemed capable of managing. Perhaps he too was lured into remembering the last time she'd been invited into his earthy-hued den of masculinity.

At length, the detective turned where she stood and slowly approached. She noted his grip on the towel clench incrementally tighter. A minor lift of his chin compounded the gesture. _God._ He looked so wary. _Oh. Nope._ Maybe part of him was, but a parsimonious anger was present too. It flexed at his clenched jaw and glinted in his eyes—obsidian jewels in the gloom—which had narrowed perceptibly.

Kate stopped with a mere foot between them and let her gaze lower from his to make another, more determined evaluation of the figure before her. On the beach, she'd been caught off-guard. Distracted by the riot of her own nerves. Closer inspection revealed a physique that was less definition than it was outright mass. Acquired by brief, overly aggressive workouts seeking pure strength, not the controlled effort of someone gunning for, well, guns.

In the near-perfect silence of the largely dormant summer home, her aggrieved murmur was clear. "What have you done to yourself?"

The spike of his eyebrows implied a conversation he hadn't been expecting. He curled his left arm around his abdomen in an almost laughably pitiful attempt to conceal himself. "What're you doing in here? Not that you aren't welcome," he added swiftly in a rougher tone, but stopped short and frowned.

"I was going to call the precinct with an update." The abode had few downsides; a lack of reliable cell-phone reception was one of them. A microcell signal booster was utilized to compensate for that seclusion, but it wasn't left on during the owner's long absences.

"I see." The man's gaze cut to the desk on which the equipment was stored. "I'll take care of—

"Castle. Look at me, and answer me, please."

He did in time, clearly uncomfortable. The form that prompted her concern shifted its weight from one hip to the other. "You, uh, don't approve?"

 _Are you kidding me right now?_ Beckett jerked her gaze sharply up to his and lifted an eyebrow of her own to communicate the foolishness of his question. Beads of water yet clung to the hills and valleys of his heavier frame. Sun-warmed skin brought on images of better days. The roughness of stubble called to her for the shuddering contrast it would be against her softer skin. He looked like a tall glass of ice-water on a scorching summer day.

" _Why_ did you do it, Rick?"

"I-I've been wanting to for a while."

"Yeah, but it happened recently."

Castle just stared at her.

Kate slid a palm back over her hair, sighed with some impatience at his reluctance. She tried to make her tone more conversational to set him at ease. Lost cause. It hurt to see him so…different. "You know, being stronger or faster isn't enough sometimes. Terrible things happen and we can't always stop them."

"Oh," her partner issued, eyes closing briefly. "You think I did this because I couldn't—because of the cemetery," he corrected with a hitch of his breath. He met her gaze and didn't shy from the probing. "I'd be lying if I said that hadn't crossed my mind, but this wasn't about that morning. Not in the way you're inferring."

Kate really wanted to believe that. She arched an eyebrow again in mute prompting.

Rick squinted and looked to one side. The half-lofted hand at his middle curled into a loose fist against his right side. Not angry by then, but purely averse. For a moment, she thought it might take an ear pinch to get him spilling. Then the man huffed and relinquished, "I spoke to Jim on the morning you started your physical therapy." She frowned lightly and shook her head when he fixed her with an expectant look. "This wasn't—I didn't do this in the hope of being able to successfully race any future bullets." He turned away some to face the bedroom beyond them both. "It helped me feel closer to you, that's all."

Oh. _Oh God..._

"Please—" he cut himself short, cleared his throat again and looked down at the floor between them. "Please don't say anything. I needed it. Can we leave it at that?"

"Okay," Kate managed to breathe out, though she could have exploded with the pressure of pent-up attempts at reassuring him, thanking him, showering him all over again with how goddamn much that meant to her. It was an instinctive move to reach for him.

Castle didn't back away, but flinched visibly again, sharply.

The detective sighed and curled her arms around herself instead. "So, you are upset. Some at least."

"Beckett…" The man sighed and raked his fingers through his shorter, damp hair.

As if summoned by the surname, the detective lowered her arms and squared her shoulders. "I'll let you get dressed. And since that stupid beach ate the to-go cups I brought for us," she added with a decent facsimile of a wry smirk, "I'll make us a couple mugs for the road. Sound good?"

"Kate—"

 _Oof!_ She was the one to flinch a little that time but was thankfully already en route to the east hallway door. "Don't shave just yet," she called back. "The scruff is a nice compliment to the new bulk—you're like that guy on the Brawny paper-towel packages."

"Wha—Rude," he fired after her in protest.

The fleet, trilling laugh that escaped her was much less forced. It was a small splash of cool relief at her core. She was 'Kate' to him again for a moment there. Not exactly 'Allie' yet. _Maybe that won't be so easy after all, but this is still a good start._ An expansive exhale loosened some of the knots of tension inside.

Her partner emerged only fifteen minutes later in charcoal slacks with a sports coat slumped over the crook of his right elbow. He was in the process of wrestling with the top three buttons of a white dress shirt. The sleeves hung loose. A distinct curl of pleasure awoke to behold that. The view itself was nice; mouth-watering torsions of vascular forearms as they worked, the fabric at either bicep pulled smooth across the obstructions flesh imposed, a lightly shadowed dip at the clavicle. More pleasing still, however, was the haste to rejoin her implied by the other's mostly-complete state of dress.

Rick grunted in disgust and left the last two buttons undone. He looked at his cuffs and then at Kate.

She grinned in surprised pleasure when he advanced to present them beseechingly to her. "Big, tough man defeated by phalangeal dexterity."

He watched her eyes as she smoothed the right sleeve and latched its button. The unwavering focus was apparent at her peripheral. "I'm really not, you know."

"Big and tough? It's true what they say then: appearances are decei—

"I'm not mad at you," he interjected, but quietly. It didn't take volume for those words to jolt her to a sudden halt. "I'm pissed off at myself." She scoffed quietly and continued with the other sleeve. The effort was stalled again by one of his hands closing lightly over her industrious digits. "It bothers me that you'd come here expecting the worst. I thought giving you space was what you needed."

"It was," she replied, also quietly, but immediately. "I was, I _am_ grateful, Castle." The study of his gaze relented as she finished and again tugged his sleeve crisply straight. She took the coat from where it was slumped over his arm and opened it. A surprised blip of a smile appeared before the other turned and slipped it on with her aid.

"But you can't accept that I could be okay with it," Rick said as he stepped forward to the counter and gathered his keys, cellphone, and wallet. When he turned again and gathered the lidded cups of coffee she'd prepared, his brow was marred some by lines of disturbance. "I don't understand how you of all people could think otherwise."

Kate frowned. "Me of all people?"

"Beckett, you changed everything the last time you were here." She didn't know how to reply to that, but he continued without it being necessary. "You changed _me_."

He was different. That had been true over a year ago when he returned the previous fall.

"I know it was difficult when I came back."

The detective's frown remained, an objection stirred toward the surface.

"For a while there," he mused, glancing aside as if peering through a window to that time, "I was pretty well cut adrift. Our work together was the only thing that made ironclad sense. There's no dithering about whether or not to catch a murderer. Don't misunderstand me though; I was never unsure about you. It's just the opposite. I was unsure of myself. Before our weekend away together, there was no real expectation in my mind of one day living without the weight of guilt I'd been carrying. Without it...hell. Everything came untethered. It felt like I was reassembling myself from the ground on up."

Beckett tried to mask her surprise. That was the first time he breached the subject willingly. When he returned from that summer away, he'd been distant. God had it hurt. They'd parted in Montauk with a kiss she'd dreamt about for weeks afterward, but he'd come back so quiet and reserved. Uncertain. Within a few short weeks, her partner thawed and they fell back into a smooth pattern at the precinct. But it was still different and they had spent nine long months trying to readjust to where they were with one another—what they were.

It would have been so much easier if it hadn't been so obvious that he still cared. The trip to L.A., an 'undercover kiss' that brought her dreams roaring back to life, and so many other thoughtful gifts or sweet comments had kept her heart effectively chained and locked to what she feared was one-sided certitude.

The culmination of both their pent-up frustrations when they'd fought in her apartment before Roy died…

Looking at the man now, she can see and hear him then.

" _I just—I need time, Kate. I would never leave you, damn it."_

 _"No. You're so much crueler than that. You stay just close enough to twist the knife and bleed me a little more every day."_

God. She shouldn't have said 'knife'. He'd paled like a ghost and left her apartment in a fucking daze. She hadn't even considered her comment in relation to her mother's murder, to the single greatest horror of her life thus far. Not until Rick was long gone. It wasn't an intentional association, but how could a writer of all people dismiss the implications?

Then the cemetery, the sniper, and her long recovery. _Irony is a motherfucker._ Keeping him at a distance while she healed was never about revenge or reciprocity. Sustained and at times systemic pain turns people into someone they are otherwise not. It lashes out with vile bitterness, without forethought or permission. Kate has seen it turn people into monsters, other cops who'd been wounded in the line of duty. She has watched pain tear families apart. There was no way in Hell she was going to allow the author near her at such a precarious time. Too much uncertainty and regret had built up between them. She hadn't trusted herself.

Instead, she'd clung to the memory of him smoothing her hair back from her brow on the cemetery grass, to his wet blue eyes set against the sympathetic sky, and even to the agony of his palm pressed flush to her chest as the blood desperately flooded out. To the words of love that followed her all the way down into the dark.

"I wish you'd told me this back then," she gritted presently. The anger had waned over her summer apart, but grief for the time they had lost because of both their choices was still raw.

"I wish I had too. I wish I'd understood then what was really holding me back. It took," he grimaced, stopped. Then started again, "It took a crystalline moment of utter devastation to help me see clearly." No need to ask what calamity was being spoken of.

Lanie had recently, tearfully relayed the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

 _"He was calling for you, saying how he needed you. Loved you. Sorry, honey, I know you're private, but he wasn't in his right mind. And then suddenly he seemed to just shatter. He thought you'd…you know. He just knelt there gaping and wide-eyed. By then we were almost to you. But God, his head snapped to us with this look of unbridled menace. I can't even look at him now without seeing it. He was like those animals you read about that guard their fallen, driven savage. Thank God for Javi. He knew what was coming before I did and took the brunt of your writer's insane charge. It took five people to keep him down so I could get to you. He kept c-calling out. Promised he'd be good if you came back, like a little boy might, y'know? B-broke my—ugh, God, I'm sorry. He broke my damn heart."_

"You waited for me," Rick said, bringing her jarringly back to reality. Both cups of coffee were back on the counter. The proximity between them had been decreased to almost nothing amidst her distraction. The blue of his eyes, clearer now in the brighter kitchen, were like wells of gravity pulling specifically at the heart drumming hard in her chest. "How could I deny you the same?"

It flew out of her mouth, a gushed torrent. "You said you loved me. I-I heard you."

"No."

Kate flinched bodily in shock at the denial.

"I didn't use those words in the past tense. I never will."

"Ugh, fuck," she grunted, backing off some to rest her hands on her knees. To _breathe_. "Don't do this to me. Not unless you're sure. I can't watch you drift apart like that again. I won't. I did too in a way, I know. It's terrible, so goddamned hypocritical. But even so, I can't—"

Beckett stiffened at the feel of his hands gripping at the shoulders of her coat, tugging her sharply upright and into a mauling embrace. Crushing. "This time we're leaving here together," he growled angrily into her hair, "I promise. I fucking _promise_." He swore—literally as well as figuratively. It was so rare the former happened. That prodigious vocabulary delighted in finding every other way around such crude measures of speech.

The woman sighed and sagged against him for an instant before curling him up in her arms as well.

"Hurts," she was forced to croak at length.

Rick shot away to arms length as though she were a pillar of flame. "Ah, shit. I'm sorry."

A hum of dim amusement spiraled up and out of her along with the relieved breath. She stepped back into him again and the grasp of his arms was gentler but still nice. He smelled so good. "When did you become such a potty-mouth?"

"Someone's a bad influence on me, clearly. You work fast."

"Oh gosh, work. I called the 12th and Gates gave me hell for being gone so long. We have to—"

"Get on the road," he finished with a slide of his hand against her back. "I know. It's okay."

"Still. You love me," she uttered, pulling back enough to grin widely at him.

"Focus, Allie."

"Oh, I am, Brute. I am."

Blue eyes dipped into the merger of their chests and then back up. "Do you…too?"

"You have to ask? And you have to phrase it like something out of Dr. Seuss?"

"Rude," he complained on a huff, but smiled helplessly with a soft nudge of his forehead coming to rest against hers.

"Yeah, me too. God, yes. I love the shit out of you, Rick."

A tilt of his chin sent a modulated peal of laughter upwards. "Wow. Nicely put."

"Shaddup," she grumbled, embarrassed, and tugged him down by his ears into a proper, heated welcome at her mouth. The site of their first kiss became that of their second fully intentional one—no thinly veiled subterfuge to mar it.

Beckett resolved then and there, somewhat woozily, that their third wouldn't wait for another trip to Montauk.


	4. Chapter 4

**Monday, October 27** **th** **, 2011**

 **9:12 AM, near Manorville, NY.**

Excitement elicited by their reunion was tempered by the silence and solitude during the drive back to the city.

It was like wandering through the grand set piece for a post-apocalyptic film. They were alone on the road for long stretches at a time. Cars and trucks of myriad type sat abandoned on the shoulder of the westbound lane and central median. Others were parked along intermittent service roads that paralleled the highway. The lack of damage implied a mere absence of fuel in most cases, but there were dozens within the first half of the trip back to the city. They stood in grim testament to yesterday's long, gridlocked exodus of evacuees from areas along Long Island's north and south shores.

Initial rain bands from Harbinger were still hours away, but the shadow of expectation cast by the superstorm had been spurring frenzied preparations for the past three days. Officially, it was named Hurricane Rita, but social media redubbed the monster owing to a tropical storm poised to strike in its wake. The moniker stuck.

"I heard about this on the news," Beckett murmured as she drove, eying the unmoving vehicles. Lowering her voice occurred without forethought amidst the disquieting scenery. "It was still dark coming out here this morning though; I had no idea how bad it was."

Yesterday, the temporary, mistaken closure of multiple exits onto Highway 27 by State Police troopers had sent hundreds of evacuees seeking the already packed I-485 as an alternative. The logjam to result had taken over thirteen hours to get sorted. Fights had broken out during the confusion resulting in hospitalizations and arrests. A few advance response teams from FEMA and the National Guard had been forced to suspend operations elsewhere to deliver food and water to the effectively stranded motorists.

A hum of acknowledgment arose from her passenger, soon followed by, "It's hard to believe a mistake that only took two hours to correct could result in this kind of chaos, hrm? Just between you and me, I know the Deputy Superintendent who was in command during the mix-up. There are more foolish leaders out there, and less dedicated officers too, I'm sure." Kate glance briefly aside at him, sensing a 'but'. The writer didn't leave her hanging. "But it's no secret that he's a drunk. For his sake, I hope that wasn't the impetus of this mess."

"They'll call for his head either way," Beckett predicted.

"Mm. Public perception is difficult to sway without sacrificial lambs."

They drove in silence for a time. A few other cars appeared in the interim headed misguidedly east. Since evacuation was voluntary in most areas there was nothing to be done about stragglers. The determination to stay behind, even in dangerously low-lying areas, was thankfully as rare as it was ill-advised. Even so, some did. Their obstinacy was owed to expectations for widespread looting. In examples of near-astounding idiocy and apathy, online clubs had formed to organize multiple gangs of would-be plunderers. A thin veneer of web-based anonymity wasn't stopping almost two hundred people from preparing to take advantage of the chaos. The scope and brazen organization for mischief were unprecedented, but then, so was the potential destruction headed the city's way.

Their last exchange prompted Kate to eventually say, "Dina asked me to pass along her gratitude."

Castle stirred where he sat as if coming back from elsewhere within his mind. In place of a question, he fixed her with an inquisitive lift of his eyebrows at their peaks.

"Kally's friend?"

"Who?"

 _Stellar answer._ Kate smiled briefly, explained, "Those girls on the beach earlier."

"Oh."

Beckett waited for an elaboration, but he had nothing to add. "You were a little rough on Boomer."

"Do you think so?" He didn't wait long for an answer that Kate deemed unnecessary to give by repeating herself. "It can be a rough scene. Snaking a wave like that kook did with me is no small breach of etiquette. As rules go, that one is fundamental. I've seen more than broken boards result from such altercations."

"Kook?"

"The equivalent to a wanna-be, or in this case, a beginner tackling swells he doesn't belong on. On one hand, you want newbies to be able to attempt waves beyond their skill level. You want them to be excited about improving. It broadens the industry for everyone. On the other hand, it's generally considered poor form to partake in set waves that could be claimed by people who're actually capable of enjoying them. There were only three of us," Rick continued, "so I didn't mind really, except for the fact that I had to babysit them."

Kate didn't laugh but quivered some in the driver's seat. "You're such a snob. Or a bully. Both?"

Rick chuckled, huffed with a fleet shrug. "It's dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. I'm talking about the etiquette as much as surfing itself. If he pulls that kind of attitude somewhere else, he could get into real trouble. A broken board seems pretty tame by comparison. As for that, it'll be a reminder for him to reconsider his actions every time he looks at the pieces or otherwise recalls our run-in from now on. Maybe I've spared him from a worse encounter somewhere down the road."

It was compelling logic at face value, cunning even, but also uncharacteristically cold.

"You could've told him that," she proposed with a slight furrow of her brow. "I'm surprised is all. I would expect you to at least try reasoning with someone before forcing a lesson like that on them."

"You know better than most: bandying words is only as useful as the audience is receptive."

Surprised went right out the window. Hearing him say that—a writer, no, _the_ writer who had brought her through so many of her own dark corridors as a younger woman—was downright shocking. Dismaying. Potential replies whirled through her mind, but fluttered, fell, and died without being granted flight from her mouth.

 _I did this to you, didn't I?_ Technically, one might blame her would-be assassin with whom there was not and could never have been any such negotiations or attempts of reasoning. _But I pushed it to that point, and thereby pushed you to this point._

Beckett filed away his comment for later debate, cleared her throat. "They, er, called you 'Sway'."

Castle registered no surprise, only sipped from his travel mug with a mute nod at first. While tucking it back into the cup holder her passenger volunteered, "Surfing is ancient. Even before some manner of a vessel was utilized, people are said to have been drawn to being swept along by the waves." He paused thoughtfully. "It's as though some internal connection to the ocean survived our long years of evolution beyond its reach." The author blinked, pursed his lips, and faced the road ahead. " _Heʻe nalu_ —that's what Hawaiians call it. Wave sliding. Several cultures embraced the sport in their own ways throughout its long history, but to most people, Hawaii is where surfing transcended its origins and became a true art form. It permeated many aspects of their culture, even religion. Its modern manifestation in the continental States sort of pales by comparison, but it's surrounded by an interesting sub-culture nonetheless."

"You've never talked about it before."

"Mm," he confirmed wordlessly.

"Why not?"

"Hrm? Oh." One shoulder lifted in a shrug. "It's more of a hobby for me these days."

"Suggesting there was a time it was more?"

Rick smiled humorlessly. "I suppose you could say that. The ocean unnerves me."

Beckett's eyebrows lifted sharply. "What? Then why do you subject yourself to it?" The question was barely out of her mouth before implications of his past began associating themselves to the subject. A hazy image of self-flagellation began to coalesce. She winced inwardly and gazed askance at the man with mild trepidation.

The concern must have been apparent because Castle exhaled a breath of dim amusement and shook his head. "Don't make too much of it, Beckett. I started surfing back when Meredith was pregnant with Alexis. Fatherhood was the single most frightening confrontation of my life. Everything that has happened to me beyond that has been dealt with in a fashion. Given time and patience, anything that has yet to happen can be likewise weathered. But the thought of inflicting lasting, lifelong impacts on a child? Intentionally or otherwise? That was terrifying to me. There are so many ways things could've gone wrong for my daughter and I. Ways that I used to lay awake at night thinking about, being afraid would come true."

Beckett said nothing. A strange surge of jealousy was evoked by the subject. She imagined herself lying next to his sleepless form in bed, her belly swollen with life between them, sharing both their fears and attempting to pacify them together on their budding family's behalf. It was an unexpectedly powerful series of images. Her throat closed so that no interruption was manageable even if she'd had one to make.

 _Jeez, Katie. Slow your roll._

"I'm not thalassophobic in the true sense of the term," Rick went on evenly. "The ocean simply unnerves me, as I said. The deep, I mean, not so much the shore. When I was young, I went on a deep-sea fishing trip. Far enough that land vanished from every horizon. As we drifted out there, I remember the feeling that overcame me. It wasn't a sense of hostility. What I felt was...pure indifference. I knew with seamless certainty that if I fell in and drowned, the ocean wouldn't care. It would eat what remained and that would be my story. It was, uh, the first time that I realized I was a vulnerable and temporary part of this world. It chilled me to the bone."

According to the timeline of his life that Kate was familiar with, Rick would have been five years old in the described scenario. Maybe as young as four, but more likely five. _For what that difference is worth._ She could hardly stand listening to him talk about it, such was the ardency of her desire to fix something beyond her ability to mend. The leather of the steering wheel creaked beneath the abuse of her clenched and dully aching grips.

"I couldn't see past the water's surface, which only inspired wondering what might be down there. I pictured an ocean floor littered with the bones of other little boys. Boys like me. I imagined their skeletal limbs waving and swirling ineffectively from their dark graves. Gaping eye sockets trained upwards on the belly of our boat. They were down there," he murmured, eyes glazed with distance, breathing short and clipped. The words tumbled after each other like he was reciting a litany which, once begun, must be completed. "So many. I could almost hear the clattering of their little bodies clambering atop one another. Forming a massive pyramid of struggling dead, ascending inch-by-inch up from of the cold anonymity of the uncaring sea until their bony fingers were scraping desperately against the hull. I wasn't afraid they would hurt us. No. They just need to be in our thoughts. Mourned maybe. Remembered—that's what they need above anything else. Even if inducing our terror is the only means by which they can make that happen, it'd be worth that price if they could only be thought about again for one more blissful moment."

"Castle," Beckett hissed, soft but sharp.

Mercifully, he shut the fuck up. It took several long seconds before the gaping of his eyes released their hold on something that only he could see. The man turned away with a clearing of his throat to face the view out the passenger window. Another full minute passed, time in which the woman gradually relaxed her grasps upon the wheel. The illusory sensation of her heart being clenched around what he'd said did not relent so easily.

They were still the lone functional car in sight upon the highway. She felt the isolation keenly.

"Silly," her companion lofted succinctly above the hum of tires against the blacktop.

The detective softly replied, "Not really. Fear is the price for your imagination. I guess part of me figured that was always true."

Witnessing her grief on his behalf disturbed the other. He shifted where he sat and frowned. "Uh, anyway… I, ah, couldn't get a grip on being worried about becoming a father. That lasted right up until the moment Alexis was in my arms for the first time. Leading up to that, however, the ocean became a kind of surrogate enemy that I could confront and overcome. Surfing was merely the mechanism of the contest. It's funny though because that wasn't my specific intent at the time. I never stood on the shore and determined that one fear should relate to the other. The behavior just kind of happened. Only in a retrospective analysis is the motivation clarified. So, uh, yeah, other surfers call me 'Sway'. They think I'm being gentle with the waves—going with the flow as it were. The truth is: some irrational part of me will always be tentative out there, mindful of disturbing the imagined, watery graves of those other little boys."

 _Fuckin'. Hell._

Sometimes…the detective doesn't know what to do with this man. What to say or even think. At such moments, he was a pure ache at her core which could not be eased by any method she'd found. And God how she wished such knowledge existed. She wanted so badly to quiet the disturbances in his mind and heart. Soothe him.

Castle was his own worst enemy though, and there was no changing that.

"Thanks," Beckett issued quietly. "For explaining," she clarified with a fleet glance at him. The author bestowed a radiant smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, looking like anything but a haunted man.

In the wake of their exchange, her partner plugged a USB cable into the sedan's console and sets his iPad into place against the gear shifter at a viewable angle for both of them. A bit of prodding with his index finger brought up the latest news coverage on the approaching storm. Harbinger had angled back out to sea where it was gathering renewed momentum. It was back to a category two hurricane. Initial rainfall was predicted within a few hours. The main event was slated to strike the New Jersey shore in the midafternoon and lash the New York metropolitan area over the following forty-eight hours.

"Look'it the size of that thing," Kate murmured, glancing briefly at the associated radar image. Harbinger's swirling breadth encompassed almost the entire eastern seaboard of the United States.

"Aptly named. From what I've seen and heard, leadership across the city and state has responded to the threat accordingly. We're probably as close to ready as can be reasonably expected."

"I guess," the detective returned dubiously. "The whole city is poised for closure. The MTA has shut down the subways and is trying to secure accesses to prevent major flooding. Bridges are closing this evening. Tunnels are slated for the same, but there's an afternoon advisory in effect for them too depending on the rainfall."

"Manhattan is about to start feeling like the island it actually is."

"Yep. We're getting strapped for personnel at the 12th. All the emergency services are. People wanna be with their families to make sure they're safe. We'll manage—I hope," she added grimly. "Dets like me and the boys are going to be reassigned as needed to help out with public safety."

"Oh?" Castle frowned somewhat, perplexed. "If there's no active case, why were you sent to retrieve me?"

"That's a great question," Beckett muttered.

"Whoa, wait. They didn't tell you?"

"Nope. I've been riding a desk for the past five days, waiting for my paperwork to come through. Gates approached me last night to let me know I was cleared for duty and that my first order of business was coming to get you." She glanced aside at him again and grinned with sudden breadth. "No complaints on that point."

"None," he agreed, "but I share your disdain for the mystery of why it was necessary. I mean, it's fine. I was coming back to the city anyway. Still, I wasn't planning on being tapped by the precinct."

"Well, that's what they want, but if you need to be with Alexis and Martha…" She trailed off upon noting the small shake of his head being given. Rather, the sternness of demeanor that accompanied it.

"Alexis is at Stanford," Castle reported. "She took early admission."

"Oh." The softness of the clipped reply was all that emerged past Kate's surprise. Into its wake crept several moments of quiet, a span that seemed to imply her partner was less than pleased by the circumstances.

"I'm happy for her," he murmured as if privy to her musings. "It was just, uh, sudden."

"I remember you saying that she wanted to. It's where Ashley went, right?"

"Yes. It began as a gambit of young love. For a while there it seemed like she might've changed her mind. Right up until it changed unequivocally back." He looked away to his right again, watching as the blur of passing residential neighborhoods yielded to intermingled blotches of industry and commerce. "Your father keeps reminding me that they all leave the nest sooner or later." The thought of Rick being counseled by Jim Beckett garnered some surprise from the lawyer's daughter. "This feels more like a push by my own hands."

Kate stared at the road ahead while only half aware of it. She had no idea what to say.

The writer hummed wordlessly with another slow shake of his head. "Maybe I shouldn't have told her about my past—about Montauk. I probably wouldn't have if I'd known the trauma that laid ahead at that time."

"Rick," she began but hesitated before the words were orderly enough in her mind to emerge from her lips. "You came back…different. You said so yourself. I don't think telling her was a mistake. Alexis deserved to know what was going on—why it was going on."

"She did," he confirmed. "But she deserves to be happy too. Not get torn up worrying about me. Her life still only just beginning in the grand scheme of things. It's an exciting crossroads in her life, and I want her to be able to focus on that."

"Admission to Stanford is no easy feat to manage even with a full four years of high school. She is focused, babe. Otherwise, she wouldn't have gotten in, right?"

"The only thing she might've lacked beforehand was the proper motivation to go through with it." He sighed mutely. "I sure as hell gave her that."

"Stop," the detective grit. "Don't do that. Not to yourself or to her." The author turned to focus bemusedly on her. He was receptive to her thoughts even then—never a closed door or forbidding wall. Not with her. Beckett couldn't let herself linger on that detail, but soldiered on, "Alexis earned it for herself, whatever motivations might be driving her. You're relevant to her decision, of course, and yeah, maybe there are some sad reasons in addition to the many good ones you've given her, but I guarantee you she has others all her own. So, let her have the accomplishment, okay? Don't—ah… Sorry, jeez, this sounds bad even in my head, but: Don't tarnish what she's done for herself by making it about you."

To her surprise, a chuckle came to life in his chest and toured the column of his throat. He smiled again and nodded once. "That's spookily close to what Jim said." _Jeez, Dad. Don't steal my thunder._ "I'm keeping it in mind. Trying to, rather. I really am. It's just difficult to watch her go in the wake of so much happening recently. None of us can delude ourselves into suggesting there's no connection."

"True, yeah. All I'm saying—well, all we Becketts' are saying, apparently—is not to let the bad blind you to the good. This is a wonderful opportunity. She's going to have an amazing time out there."

"The Becketts are wise."

Kate hummed briefly in amusement. "Exactly how much quality time have you and my dad been spending together? Should I be worried?"

Rick grinned shamelessly. "There have been reciprocated showcases of baby pictures."

God. She has seen those albums. Ninety percent of them show her bare-assed, from a babe to almost six-years-old. _Gah._ Some later ones too, no question. The nudity was real. "Get the fuck out," she growled.

"Language, Allie. Use your words."

"I'm about to use my taser, Castle."

Her partner only chuckled again briefly in reply. "You would've been proud," he continued moments later, subdued but still wearing a semblance of a smile. "Jim didn't falter much. There's still pain there. Turning so many pages with Jo also present made that all too clear. But he told me the stories attached to the images with no urging necessary and with a lot of real laughter. It was good."

The uneven stumbling of her heart accompanied them throughout the next half-mile. Kate smiled through it, at first slimly but then with genuine pleasure. "Good." And seconds later an arch of an eyebrow. "Jo, huh? Mom always said she hated him calling her that."

"Like you hate 'Allie'." They both knew she didn't, despite many previous admonishments. "Jim painted an irrevocable image. To me…she's Jo."

Kate blinked at the view before them a few times, wrestling aside warmth that threatened to bloom behind her eyes and graduate to wetness. "Good," she reiterated quietly.

"May I, uh, ask you something?" The fact that he sought permission beforehand set off warning claxons within her already tensed chest. Glancing away from the road for a fleet assessment revealed precious little of his intent. The seriousness alone belied the danger.

"You can _ask_ ," she replied, omitting the obvious caveat implied by her tone: _I won't guarantee an answer._

"Your father also showed me a, uh, video…"

 _Oh shit._

"…of you singing."

 _Of course he did._ Kate sighed, shifting her grip on the wheel to let her fingers relax some and cool off. So many years perfecting a poker face amounted to the stoic façade she wore presently. The unexpected turn of conversation demanded some time to come to terms with. It felt like ancient history.

"You have the voice of an angel," Rick pressed out through a clenched jaw, as if it hurt to say so. More likely it pained him to hold back from saying anything more, or perhaps to prevent himself from asking to hear it right then and there.

 _Ah. God._ "Stop," she issued shortly, not angrily. "Just…gimme a sec. Please."

He gave her twenty silent miles of quaint, but largely monotonous scenery. She watched dazedly as several other cars joined in on their westward sojourn, one of them sailing on by like a bat out of hell. A convoy of six military trucks passed in the eastbound. The city began appearing from out the verge of the bruised skyline ahead and slowly rose towards prominence.

"You—" Kate began at last but stalled immediately.

"Go on," Rick coaxed, a thrumming murmur at her side.

"You buried your music alongside Llewellyn's victims, didn't you? Playing the piano? You didn't touch the instrument again after what happened."

He perceived the underlying message. "You buried your singing with Jo."

It wasn't until they were crossing the upper GW into Manhattan forty minutes later that he spoke again. "It's a shame, Kate. I mean…such a loss for the rest of us. Definitely for me. You could tell me the same," he preempted with a nod. "I know. Reciprocity doesn't make it any less true."

Maybe she could have found words for herself to rebut him that time. She didn't have the heart to seek them.


	5. Chapter 5

**Monday, October 27** **th** **, 2011**

 **10:22 AM, East Village, NYC.**

It was chaos in the city, but not as bad as expected. The prevailing air was something stranger and less definable. Kate glimpsed it in the faces of so many people headed in and out of varied storefronts; a sense of general uncertainty marked by glimpses of exasperation, even faint amusement in some cases. It was as though folks were paying lip service to preparation while believing the effort gratuitous.

The news playing on Castle's iPad featured interviews from Times Square. Visitors from out of town were expressing alarm at being caught away from home with Harbinger bearing down. Local citizenry, meanwhile, were largely blasé in their comments, confirming an ill-advised lack of concern.

"I hope they're just posturing for the cameras," Beckett muttered as they paused at a red light.

"They make it sound so uncool to be prepared," her partner replied with a shake of his head. "Classic Manhattanite reaction, don't you think? Why worry? Obviously, not even nature can put asunder our crown jewel of civilization. Take a good look; these are the people you'll probably be rescuing over the next couple days."

Beckett crinkled her nose at the thought.

By the time they entered the East Village it was nearing ten-thirty. Minus the slew of last-minute shoppers, it looked like any other Monday. Fifth Street lay before them with its conjoined five-story residential buildings along the north side of the street. Trees populating the south lent a sense of seclusion that, elsewhere in the Big Apple, was imposed more sternly by towers of stone, steel, and glass. Most parking spaces were taken. They ended up in one reserved for police personnel only.

Beckett glanced up over the familiar stonework of The House and back down to the double front doors. There was still an unconscious hitch to getting out of the car and going inside, a pause to evaluate in which her mind turned automatically to Roy Montgomery. To her mother's case, which was never far from thought, and now ran parallel to her former mentor in a way that made her abdomen clench. Intermittent trickles of officers and civilian aids came and went in the seconds-long-span.

"I heard your return was greeted with an ovation."

The woman shifted with recalled discomfort in her seat, but her lips pulled into a faint smile. "You'd think they'd never seen a gal walk in after taking a round to the ticker before."

"Amateurs," her companion grunted, playing along with a sniff and disdainful loft of his nose.

"All week it's been 'Lucky your heart is made of stone, Beckett', or 'That dumbass sniper—thinking you had a heart in the first place'." The woman rolled her eyes while quivering with mirth. "It's been kind of nice actually. I've fallen back into touch with some people I'd drifted apart from."

"As silver linings go, that's a fine one. I, ah, saw the piece they printed about you in the _Times_ a few days ago. I noticed you didn't give them a direct quote to work with."

"Yeah, I'm such a popular gal," Beckett replied with some derision of her own. A press liaison from One-PP has been handling that mess on her behalf. Her fictional counterpart in Castle's writing made both the shooting and her return to duty newsworthy.

"You are though," her shadow stated evenly, drawing her gaze. His focus was already present with a glint of curiosity apparent. "This kind of attention might catapult a career if it were taken advantage of. Odds are good that whispers are being exchanged right now by people in positions of command who are waiting to see if you'll attempt to mobilize and do something with it. Adversaries who will try to shut you down quick and potential allies who would see your star ascend higher still, and theirs along with it."

Well now...that was an unsettling thought.

Beckett frowned and shifted in her seat. "I took the investigative career track specifically to avoid politics. I don't wear the right shoes for trudging through bullshit." She held her nose and poked out her tongue in needless illustration.

Her partner refused to be so easily deterred by humor. A larger point was being worked towards. She knew the signs. "You made that choice back when finding killers was all that mattered."

A raw scrape of indignation bled into her tone. "That still is all that matters."

"It isn't though," Castle continued mildly, touching at the crook of her elbow as she stripped off her seatbelt in preparation to exit the vehicle. It stayed the woman without direct permission from her brain. "It remains the driving force, obviously. I would expect nothing less. But your original hunt," the other continued with a lean of significance in his baritone, "has led you to facing off against bigger, meaner prey."

He paused to gauge her reception and must have glimpsed a willingness to listen that she was unaware of broadcasting because he went on.

"Whoever is behind your shooting made a grave error by going after you at such a flagrantly public venue. It was conceited. Petulant. In failure, they have unwittingly opened a pathway for you to gain newfound armor and armaments in the form of potential rank, contacts, and allies who might join your struggle, even if it's ultimately for their own purposes." Another blip of time allowed him to scrutinize her narrowed eyes and pursed lips, naked indications of her displeasure. "You disapprove," Rick observed. "Why? Why wouldn't you seek to adapt as a hunter to confront a greater level of threat?"

"Why should I have to change anything? I'm an officer of the law. Rank? A graduate fresh out of the academy could take my mother's killer down if they had the necessary evidence in-hand. I don't need bars on my shoulder to do what I do best, Castle. And allies, really? I'm not ignorant. In politics, your so-called brothers in arms are about as trustworthy as the siblings of a shark fetus in utero." Said denizens of the sea are known to cannibalize one another even at such a tender stage of development.

"It's a different battleground than is your norm, granted. But…" Another shake of his head was given as if stumped on how to continue, yet he did without pausing to grasp for words. "You're intelligent. Capable. I think you could do anything you set your mind too, and I'm not the only one. People look up and listen when you talk. They pay attention; that alone is a significant advantage. Like it or not—use it or not—that's the quintessential mark of a leader."

A hand lofted sharply between them. The writer conceded to the demand for silence while she struggled to tamp down the emotions that roiled beneath the surface, seething up from a veritable oubliette of blackness at her core. The woman couldn't explain even to herself why those compliments in particular affected her in such a negative manner. But they did and he needed to stop.

"Thankfully enough," she finally began through grit teeth, "this is my life we're discussing, which makes it my choice." The raised appendage lowered to rest upon one of Rick's, whose slightly pained expression at her words shifted to include confusion from the unexpected contact. "Look, I'm glad you're thinking about it, okay? It's nice to know you're on my side. Our side," she corrected, and at that a slim smile did emerge. "But you have to trust me to do this my way. I've thought this through and made my choice on how to go about it."

Castle shook his head, sighing mutely. He didn't agree. That stung unexpectedly. "I trust you," is what her partner said though, which in turn elicited a sweep of her lashes in surprise. "It's your choice. I'll respect that this time, Kate. I will. Not because I concur," he added grimly, facing the passenger window. "You just so happen to have me in an untenable position: I can't risk us by doing it any other way."

 _Shit._ That was both beautiful and somewhat heartbreaking. With a rough clearing of her throat, the detective said, "We, uh, need to get inside."

"But we'll talk about this more? Later?"

It was Beckett's turn to sigh. "Later."

* * *

"Hey, Rick," one of the officers on the floor called as they stepped out of the elevator. Two other guys with him, all similarly outfitted in Hi-Vis all-weather gear, turned to regard their arrival onto the Homicide floor.

Castle squinted through the brighter glare of interior light, found his targets, and tipped his chin in initial greeting to the group. He paused in the main walkway when Beckett began to divert right towards her desk. The writer looked at her, back at the gaggle of uniforms further along, and then to her again, amusingly torn.

"Go play," the detective encouraged dryly. It won a grin from her partner, which strummed a quiet chord of mirth at her core. She answered with a light pinch of his cheek. "Make good choices." She'd only taken half a step apart before feeling the breadth of his hand clamp at her caboose. It jolted her internally, because… _yeesh_. It had been a cool minute since she'd felt a man's grip on any part of her body without there being an intent to harm attached, or, as in Rick's case earlier that morning, to help.

"Yo, Beckett."

The jerk of her attention towards Esposito only stalled her for a moment, but by the time she'd whirled at the waist to confront her fanny's accoster Castle was already out of reach. A flit and flutter of her hazel eyes about the area didn't reveal anyone having caught his florid act.

As a rule, flirtations at the precinct were not altogether forbidden. If she stopped living at work, half of a life was all she would ever possess. That allowance wouldn't spare him from an eventual reprisal.

Unexpectedly, the realization that she was with him again and thus enabled to impose some form of penance made her grin. For a moment, her mind went wild with potential recourses. She'd make him watch Temptation Lane with her—oh! And blow him during each episode intro until she's trained a Pavlovian arousal for the show's theme music. Then download the song to her cell and play it in completely inappropriate places when he was least suspecting. _Oh shit. That's awesome. Mental note: attempt this. For science._

Her colleague tried again, jarring her smutty mind loose. "Hello?"

Beckett twitched out of her thoughts and drew shutters of stoicism across her features while resuming the trip to her desk. Ryan joined his partner at their workstation as she was arriving at hers. "Hey," she volleyed back nonchalantly. Their unerring attention was felt as much as peripherally glimpsed. _Nabbed._ The desk drawer whined as she tucked in her purse and nudged it shut again. "What's up?"

"What is up?" Esposito returned immediately with smug amusement.

"Should we be offended," Ryan posed airily, "that she's been grumpy for the past week and is only now showing signs of good humor? I guess it could be related to seeing us again, huh? A kinda delayed blast of thankfulness for our consistency and positive impact on her professional life?"

Kate pointedly ignored them. The joints of her chair squelched in protest upon dropping into it. She disregarded that as well and popped the power button on her monitor, waggling the mouse to wake the machine.

"Sure," Javier chirped in reply. "Delayed. Like her arrival this morning. Must be nice to sleep in."

"I was up and sorting out precinct business before either of you even hit the snooze bar," the female detective fired back at them, goaded into a reaction. She clicked her way into her department email.

"Uh-huh."

"Spare us any details of the 'business' that put a smile on your face for the first time in three days." She looked up sharply. Ryan realized a moment too late what had been allowed to emerge. He mantled crimson, scrunched his face in a deep twinge of regret, and spun around in his chair.

Javier chortled appreciatively at both the jab and the other man's awkwardness. He was dressed in street clothes that morning, sand-blasted jeans and a dark green t-shirt. "It's good to see you two together again," the dark-eyed man offered with a shred more authenticity. She watched his gaze track left to rest upon Castle.

Hers did the same.

Working at the One-Two has always been a good fit for her counterpart. What was true from the very beginning had not yielded any over time. In fact, it was just the opposite.

The gradual acceptance of his role in the terrible events of Llewellyn Matthews' madness—that is, acknowledging being another victim and not some twisted version of a collaborator—has changed everything, as the man himself claimed. The gaping uncertainty surrounding that critical moment of his youth became, with its at-long-last clarification, a resplendent aura of confidence. It didn't present like any previous egotism. Wealth, fame, and success had little to do with it. He believed in himself now. That newfound faith was a game-changer.

Subterfuges once employed to conceal had been torn down alongside any perceived guilt. The Nikki Heat series remained ongoing, but his presence at her side was legitimized months ago by Montgomery under the vague professional designation: civilian consultant.

Gone the irreverent playboy. Ascended their new detective in all but oath and gold shield.

Rick had been presented with an NYPD employee ID card at a private dinner that Roy and Robert Wheldon had thrown together. Heavens was he proud of it. First thing the man had done was order a custom-made badge wallet for it. He couldn't buy a normal one. _"No, see, it's just an ID card and the ratio of it to the leather surface of standard-issue is too much_ , _"_ Rick had decided at the time. _"It would look pathetic without an actual badge in there too. This one, though, is designed as a hybridization of wallet and laminate holder, so it's both personally functional and professional. It's beautiful. If I was a suspect and this thing was flashed in my face by a guy, I would know that guy meant business. I'd be both intimidated and curiously aroused."_

Heh. Different though he was, Castle still Castle. The way he plays was never a mere façade.

 _Thank heavens for that. Best of both worlds._

Good humor still prevailed, but in symbiosis to…what exactly?

More. So much more. It wasn't something the detective felt comfortable putting into words, not even within her own mind. But it was real. She has seen those blue eyes glimmer with mirth, soften with affection, narrow in fierce contemplation, and harden while fixated upon suspects across the table in the interrogation room. They have shone with exultation for their victories and been shuttered by the desolation of charges that were mitigated by a slick defense attorney. She has watched them glaze with distance while taking their haltingly compiled accretions of evidence somewhere inside of himself to spin theories that have gone from silly and implausible to keenly perceptive and, at times, chillingly accurate.

'Perp-mode' she called it when he drifted apart to attempt connecting to killers' motives or mindsets.

There was plenty to like beforehand, but over the past year and change, Kate has become irrevocably fascinated with her partner's mind. The deeper she glimpsed the truer that became. At times, the view was downright frightening. Part of her shrank from the horrors he summoned at a whim. Yet even at its deepest and darkest it was nigh-entrancing to witness in action.

Watching Rick now, carousing with their fellows in blue nearby, one would be hard-pressed to imagine a man so well-acquainted with fear for the coldly turning gears of his own internal mechanisms. The other officers at the twelfth didn't see it. They looked at him more like a big brother lately, even a father figure in some cases. Rick's willingness for seriousness has lured them into gradually discarding their previous opinions and allotting a new cubbyhole of an estimation. It still boggled the woman to behold. Few things in the world are more difficult to change than someone else's mind. Yet it has been given freely in many cases.

That must speak to the fact that her partner's concealment as an irreverent playboy was never as seamless for others as it had been for her. _That tracks though, doesn't it? Who was more afraid to believe in him than me? Who had more to lose by allowing themselves look deeper and hope for more?_

The metamorphosis between half-glimpsed to more plainly visible has been bittersweet. Once upon a time, Beckett alone had been given glimpses at the magician behind the curtain. Now the reality was out there for all to see. People gravitated towards sources of charisma and character like moths to flames. Sometimes her partner seemed farther away from her than the bullpen realistically allowed to be the case.

It helped, Kate mused, that his intentions were clear by now, and they were not focused solely on gleaning inspiration for novels or pursuing one dark-haired detective among their ranks. The whole time she was healing Castle had been shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone here, despite not being allowed to officially help on her case. He didn't respond to that obstacle by pulling political strings to produce a workaround. Instead, he dove head-first into assisting other teams on their cases, thus freeing up more manpower when those cases were solved. For once, he had toiled within the system instead of circumventing it. It showcased a new manner of resolve and respect. That, perhaps, was the determining factor behind the realignment of others' estimations.

It was for Esposito, who had been the one to explain what her partner had been up to in her absence. The Latin detective had spoken with characteristic matter-of-factness, but he couldn't hide his approval.

Rick called her a natural leader that people looked to when she spoke.

What did that make him? Another example of the same?

 _No. You're something…else._

Beckett was still frowning in consideration when her cell phone chimed softly. A downward glance revealed a message alert from the 12th, which in turn had her focusing on her computer screen again. There was a short string of recent arrivals. Filters sorted most emails into designated folders: Forensics, CSU, M.E., Interdepartmental, DOJ, and several other dimensions of the NYPD. Messages that hadn't found a home included a few personalized notes welcoming her back to work. There was an email claiming to be sent from an office of INTERPOL, which elicited a lofted eyebrow. She deleted that one, assuming it to be either something sent in error or a virus waiting to gobble up her computer.

The alert-inducing new message was from the Captain, ordering her to check-in first thing.

 _Great._

"Gates?" Javier asked knowingly. Her wordless hum of confirmation prompted a cant of his head to indicate the sprawl of the bullpen behind him. "She's camped out in the war room. Brace yourself. There's been a steady stream of bars, stars, and suits since she took up occupancy."

Bar and stars. Ranking officers of the NYPD. The suits were no doubt civvies from the mayor's office and the myriad utility and transportation authorities. Every other precinct was likely facing the same influx of harried visitors. It wasn't a reason to be concerned, per se. Not with the storm bearing down. Still, Beckett gave herself a critical evaluation as she walked away from her desk, tucking in a loose fold of her undershirt and straightening the exterior top across her waistline.

She paused to duck her upper half into the break room doorway where she'd last seen Castle vanish. Words to hustle him along were already poised at her lips. The sight of him standing before the espresso machine, achingly familiar, was like watching a puzzle piece being deposited into its rightful location. A flawless fit. It scattered her intent like autumn leaves skittering across the pavement outside.

"Hey," Kate issued, and repeated herself when the word came out in a rasp too soft to be heard.

Rick turned, blinking through a rising gout of aromatic steam. "Hmm?"

"We're on. Almost done?"

"Oh, uh." He turned at the waist to present a fresh mug held gingerly at his fingertips. "I am with the one, anyway. I caffeinated on my drive early this morning though, so I guess this one can be yours."

She took the offering by the handle with a slow smile. "Thanks."

Castle held her gaze and matched her smile. "Welcome back, Detective Beckett."


	6. Chapter 6

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **10:32 AM, 12th Precinct.**

The 'war room' referred to a glass-walled office suite which stood centralized upon the fourth floor towards the east end past the break room. Before the advent of more reliable and secure communications technology, it served as the hub for medium to large scale Homicide operations within the Twelfth precinct's jurisdiction. When they needed to organize canvases or approach a suspect tactically, that had been the room in which the logistics were planned and coordinated between participating personnel. On the rare occasion, it redeemed that function. The rest of the time it was used to handle overflow for investigative interviews and staff meetings.

Presently, the full-length blinds were closed. Several steel-legged, blue padded chairs were occupied along its south-facing exterior wall by harried looking occupants. The cluster there was exceptional among the otherwise bustling floor. None of them were discussing matters together. No one was fiddling or otherwise engaged with their phones. They waited for their turns in collective, brooding silence. Each was studying their own sheaf of documents.

"They're not here on hurricane business," Beckett murmured in suspicion as they approached.

"Nor'easter," Rick said at a similar hush to her left.

"Huh?"

"Harbinger isn't a hurricane. It's a nor'easter. It's a matter of geographical origin. Common mistake."

Beckett's eyes arose in their sockets. _Welcome back indeed._ She paused near the doorway and stared down a portly, white-haired man in a powder blue suit who was unwittingly barring the way. He glanced up from a manilla folder and stared back a bit wide-eyed, then gave her a jerky head-to-toe as if jolted by a delayed reflex.

"Thanks," Beckett stated dryly, "but I'm here to use the door you're blocking, not improve the scenery."

Blushing furiously, the man shot away without a word and kept right on trucking down the hall.

A thrumming of humor arose from her companion. "Wow. Look at him go." She didn't. "To be fair," Rick deposited, still quietly and at a proximity that made her skin prickle with awareness, "you'd be an improvement on any scenery. Why I'd push Julie Andrews off her mountaintop mid-twirl if she was blocking the sight of you." The heady aromas familiar to him were like a warm pair of hands sliding around her waist in a possessive embrace.

No one nearby was studying them with undue interest, so she indulged a playful reminder. "That'd be assault."

"Assault, necessity—let's not quibble over minor details on such an auspicious day, hrm?"

 _Heh._ Ahem. _No, Katie. Work._

Beckett's swift, sharp knock produced an audible, "Enter." She pulled the portal wide enough for her and the author to slip inside.

A single glance around the room dispersed all humor and arousal.

Michael Rendell, in a crisp white shirt with full insignia, was sitting in one of the chairs on the far side of an oval table. The goddamn Assistant Chief of Detectives for Manhattan. To his right sat an only somewhat less daunting figure: Julian Alvarez, Deputy Inspector for the borough's Forensic Investigations division. Also present were Captain Gates and tech analyst Tory Ellis. Lanie Parrish was in residence. She smiled widely at the writer and detective, giving the latter a perched eyebrow that stated plainly: _Ooh, honey. We're gonna talk later. Just you wait._ Next to her sat a well-muscled and thickly bearded Lieutenant John Kirkland from ESU. Finally, and unfortunately closest to the door, sat Ethan Dickson from the 114th precinct in Queens.

Ethan fucking Dickson. Bane of her police academy training in the flesh, complete in a sharp navy suit that made her feel irrationally slack in plainclothes.

 _What the-literal-hell?_

The last eyed her with what she knew to be no less contempt than what she harbored, but he hid it behind the breadth of a smile. Subterfuge was a waste of grudgingly handsome features. The fair skin surrounding those beady brown eyes was smooth and clear. Not a wrinkle or crease of veracity.

"Detective Beckett," Victoria Gates greeted evenly, "thank you for deigning to join us."

 _Shit._

Ethan smirked at that, but she slapped the bastard on ignore within her mind and faced the Captain's intense gaze with a squaring of her shoulders. "I came in as soon as I got your message, sir."

"Was there some confusion about the urgency when you left this morning?"

 _Wow. Really?_ The woman couldn't be bothered to explain why Beckett's team was needed back at full strength so abruptly in the first place, but she was going to give them grief about not doing it fast enough?

"That was my fault, Captain," Castle volunteered. "Detective Beckett caught up with me while I was coming in from the water. I wanted to get cleaned up before we left." No mention of the chilling near-miss under brutal waves or the rescue of a fellow surfer. "Mike," he added with a grin instead, "if I'd known you were the one waiting, I would've taken the long way 'round. How are Anna and the boys?"

Of course, he would know the ACD for Manhattan. _Jeez_.

Chief Rendell didn't smile, but his posture belied an easy receptiveness. _Huh. Not just known by him then, but well-liked._ "They're good, Ricky, thanks for asking." The dark-skinned man held out a hand toward the pair of empty chairs at the table's end. The open palm appeared older than was supported by his fifty-something face and the creep of white at his temples. "Take a seat, please. We've got some trouble here. I'm hoping you can help us with it."

Castle glanced aside at Kate with a slight arch of his eyebrows and tugged out the free chairs. He eased around her to take the one on the right, sparing her from sitting next to Ethan. She could have kissed him for that.

"What's going on?" Beckett asked before delving into her coffee.

 _Yum_.

"Ethan," their ACD spoke up, "this ball began in your court. Why don't you explain?"

 _Yuck._

"'Began'?" the suited weasel repeated with some surprise. "Does that mean I'm officially being asked to hand it off to these…to the Twelfth?"

"It means that you were just given an order, Lieutenant," Alvarez answered with a baleful glare. His voice quivered with the lash of sudden anger. "Don't waste time we don't have by making him repeat it."

 _Phew_. Watching an adversary get dressed down wasn't disappointing, but the Deputy Chief was well-known for being a hard-ass who didn't play favorites. He could turn on anyone in the room with the same ferocity given the right incentive. Strange, maybe, but Kate liked that about him. It was a clean outrage on behalf of victims that elicited such wrath. That stemmed in no small part from the man's personal losses to violence according to stories on the grapevine; a wife and child who were killed in the crossfire outside of a bank during a robbery. Thirty-five years on the job hadn't dimmed the DC's inner fire by any discernible measure.

Ethan pursed his lips into a line of checked anger and stood, smoothing his tie. "Have your tech try to keep up," he said with barely a glance at Gates. Not even a nod to Tory. _Scumbag_. He advanced to the east wall and pulled a white screen down out of its fixture near the ceiling.

Across the table from him, Tory stroked at the mouse-pad of her laptop and sent an image to the screen via a Bluetooth equipped projector bolted on the west wall above and behind her. It was a night shot taken from the bank of one of Manhattan's rivers. A body lay center frame, splayed upon a crinkled brown canvas.

"White male," Lanie spoke, seemingly studying the image for the first time. "Those evidence capture tarps are ten feet square, so I'd hedge a guess at 5'11", maybe an even six feet. Looks middle-aged, forty-to-fifty. Jeans, t-shirt, and jacket—tennis shoes still on. The body is in pretty good shape, all things considered. He couldn't have been in the water for long. Which river?"

Lieutenant Kirkland frowned and asked, "Does that matter?"

Alvarez snorted and crossed his arms. "It matters. Salinity, water temperature, solubility, particulates and potential scavenging. Toxins, diatoms, algae—

"Okay, Chief," Rendell cut in mildly, "I, uh, think we get the idea."

"East River," Castle volunteered when silence fell. He drew the attention of everyone else by saying so. Something about the quality of their gazes made his partner's fingers curl into fists of wariness on her lap.

"That's the Robert Kennedy bridge," Kate explained. She took over to see who looked away, to her. Everyone did, but it took a few telling moments. _This isn't about my team at all, is it? You sent me to bring you Castle—only him._ "You can see part of the river," she continued behind a well-kept poker face, "but not much in the way of reflections along the central swath there. That's shadow. This was taken under the bridge. No supports are visible, which suggests the Kennedy. It only has one main brace on each bank. A while back we fished a bar owner out near a dock a little upriver from there. Technically, I guess this could be the Hell Gate too, but—

"At that angle," the writer jumped back in, "you'd be seeing lights from the waste treatment plant on the west bank if it were. Reflections of them on the water to the left of the bridge's shadow I mean," he clarified with a hand rising to encircle the space being described. "That place is lit up like Christmas at night. But there aren't any visible here. Plus," Castle added with a smirk at Ethan, "your accent is all Queens. Dead giveaway. They say it's slowly fading out these days. You must be born and bred."

Dickson scowled.

Beckett turned to one side briefly, unable to completely smother a smile.

"I can see why the Twelfth's Homicide unit has the closure rate it does," Rendell said with a glance at the two of them, "but for the sake of brevity let's spare ourselves anymore show-and-tell. Some of the preliminary question marks have already been crossed out." Kindly delivered, but an admonishment all the same.

Chagrined, Beckett nodded a stiff affirmative.

"Continue, Lieutenant."

"Thank you, sir. The body was found by a couple of lovesick teenagers on Shore Boulevard around four o' clock yesterday morning." He spoke of love with a slight wrinkling of his nose. "They and several others were present at a skate park nearby. Their statements line up and seem to corroborate none of them being involved."

"This could be natural causes," Lanie mused aloud by way of agreement. "Damage appears superficial at best, and what is present could have been suffered post-mortem during the trip downriver."

"Cause of death," Dickson interjected with a squint at the M.E., "is being categorized as an accidental drowning. _Our_ medical examiner also found elevated troponin and CPK enzymes, suggesting—

"A cardiac event," Alvarez murmured aloud. He met Kate's gaze by chance and clarified, "Heart attack."

"He must've been near the water when it happened and fell in," Lanie suggested. "No one swims the toxic stew of the East River intentionally. He wouldn't have had a shot at reaching safety while in cardiac distress."

"None of which adds up to Homicide," Castle concluded meaningfully with a furrow at his brow.

"Not unless he didn't fall," Lieutenant Kirkland spoke up. For Beckett, there was a note of reassurance in his proposal. Not because of the contribution itself, which was rather a given, but for its implication that she wasn't the only person in the room other than Castle who was ignorant of the reason for the meeting.

"People, please," their ACD spoke up calmly. He glanced to his left at Alvarez in disapproval for the man jumping in and stirring the pot.

The ruddy-complexioned DC mantled somewhat darker in embarrassment and lifted a hand slightly in wordless apology.

Dickson was massaging his temples with obvious irritation. The appendage fell away, and with a sharp snap of his fingers, he pointed at the screen.

Tory discreetly rolled her eyes and brought up the next image.

An identical tarp was spread out in an overhead shot with personal effects arranged upon it. A sodden wallet, keyring, and some debris that looked as though it was dredged up from the riverbed when the body was recovered. Measuring tapes were used to offer each item a sense of scale.

"Note that black bag on the right," Ethan said with a hand lifting to point it out. "It's holding a digital camera. The rest of the images we have for you this morning are going to be shots recovered from the memory card it was holding. Up until we got ahold of these, late yesterday afternoon, this was shaping up to be the accident it resembles." That timeline matched up to when Gates had approached Beckett about going to retrieve Castle.

"What, he got a shot of his killer?" the author asked with his eyebrows arched.

The interruption didn't garner any reprisals that time. Not even from Dickson. A brief series of shared looks passed among their superiors amidst an air of general discomfort. Then the Lieutenant from Queens answered, "We're not sure yet," and gestured for Tory to continue. "Give me a few seconds on each of the next several images, but keep it moving."

There was a common theme to the following half-dozen pictures. It was daytime in each one, but the bend of visible shadows wasn't consistent from one to the next, indicating various hours or perhaps even different days. Wherever they were taken, it was woodland. Dense growth of mostly coniferous specimens bore their stark winter mantles amidst swaths of kudzu and other underbrush. Some of the trunks of the larger examples were strung with fuzzy-looking vines that sprouted spindly off-chutes like the oversized legs of a centipede. Curious stamps of civilization were also present in a few photos, including the ancient, rusted out hulk of an old truck. In others it was subtler; a discarded metal bucket, a pair of old boots sitting beside a rotted stump. One image showed a red fire hydrant thrust up from the forest floor like an incongruous bloom.

She glanced at Castle to share her confusion, but his eyes were rapt to the screen. He looked…

"You recognize something?"

Rick twitched as if jolted and stared at her. Then glanced around the table at a sea of expectant faces. "It's NoBro."

"NoBro?" Beckett parroted with a frown.

"North Brother Island," he clarified. "It's not surprising that the name wouldn't jump out at you. It's been almost sixty years since it was a relevant aspect of the city. It housed, well, technically it still houses the remains of an old hospital that was built around the turn of the twentieth century. They used its isolation to deal with cases of contagious diseases like Smallpox. It assumed a couple of different identities before it was finally shut down for good in the sixties. The remnants of it have been moldering away out there since then. It and South Brother Island are both designated as conservation land these days. No visitors allowed. They're for the birds in a literal sense."

Kirkland snorted in appreciation for the turn of phrase.

Beckett looked at the others around the table. None of that information was news to the ACD, DC, or Captain Gates. The air she perceived from those three was that she and Castle were being tested and had just passed a portion of the exam. That was not comforting. It was just the opposite. With a pinging of belated curiosity, she frowned and asked her partner, "If it's off-limits, how come you're able to recognize it simply by seeing the foliage and some old trash?"

"If you're willing to jump through the proper legal hoops, it's possible to finesse a visitor's pass. It was no easy feat even for me." He considered briefly before shaking his head and continuing, "Uh, there's a good reason for that. A number of structures are still standing on the island, but they're significantly degraded. The very ground itself is unsafe; subterranean utility tunnels run all over the place and have become similarly unstable. That's its appeal for the select few who visit though; it's one of those rare examples of nature reclaiming a site of human habitation. It's been studied for applicable data as a model of what might happen to civilization in the wake of an extinction level event. You know, what becomes of what we leave behind."

"Urban explorers," Beckett murmured, more to herself.

"There you go, yeah."

"What's that?" Dickson asked.

Castle glanced at her briefly and then slid into the momentary lack when disgust delayed her ability to reply to Ethan. "It's a, uh, subculture built up around trespassing in abandoned places like this. Ill-advised in most cases, but," he shrugged one shoulder, "human curiosity will out."

"Yours did," Lanie pointed out amusedly.

A grin awakened at his features as he nodded once in confirmation. "I was considering a writing project from the perspective of a soldier who was wounded in the line of duty and billeted there after World War II. One of those previous incarnations I mentioned saw the island serving as a military base. Obviously, that book never happened, but my fascination with the place was cemented the moment I set foot on the island. For a while, it became akin to an obsession to learn everything I could about the place."

Beckett's gaze jerked back to the others around the table. _So, that's why you need him. Thank God._ They simply wanted her partner's expertise regarding the island. It galled her that no one could be bothered to say as much in the first place. _Thanks for freaking me out_.

"I'm not sure why you'd be asking _me_ about the place though," Rick continued, also facing the others around the table. "I haven't been there for several years. If you need detailed information, you should be asking Jonas Hughes from Parks and Recreation. He's more familiar with NoBro than anyone."

"Retired," Gates stated succinctly. "We're trying to track him down, but he moved out of state. There are a few other people in his department who've been to the island, but they aren't anywhere near as familiar."

Rick's brow furrowed in thought. "Jonas kept very detailed records, including maps."

"Nothing digitized," Chief Rendell concluded. "We need ready access to the information."

 _Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold the fucking phone. 'Ready' as in real-time access?_

"Augustus Finch," Castle replied, evidently not catching the underlying meaning that snagged her attention. "He's, ah, not an official resource. You might need to be willing to waive some trespassing charges on his behalf, but he's a famous urban explorer. Finch travels often but he's a local fixture. NoBro has always been his favored stomping grounds. He doesn't know the technical aspects of the island the way Jonas does, but he's your next best bet."

"Great idea," Ethan interjected dryly. He gestured to the unfurled screen on which the images were being relayed. "Gotta ouija board handy?"

Rick sat back in his seat as if the words were a smack in the face. He blinked rapidly a few times with his lips poised apart. Grief etched a home for itself at his brow and mouth. "He's the victim? I…" He shook his head, clearly at a loss.

Beckett leveled a heated glare at Dickson before turning and resting a palm on her partner's shoulder. "You knew him?"

"Not...no. I mean, not exactly. We exchanged emails and a few phone calls back when he first became interested in visiting the island. Years ago. I advised him not to go, but he was very enthusiastic about the idea." It was easy for Kate to imagine the men bonding over a shared sense of adventure. "It was obvious that he wasn't going to be deterred either way, so, I, uh, gave him what knowledge I could at the time."

"We're not here about trespassing charges, Rick," Rendell stated in quiet reassurance.

Castle nodded in understanding and took a deep breath in and out. "Right. Um." He shook his head again and seemed to rally his wits in the wake of the unpleasant surprise. "Sorry. Yeah, in that case, I guess you're talking to the next most experienced person with actually being there. So, what do you need from me, Mike?"

"We're sending in an investigative team," The ACD answered. "They need a guide." He lifted one hand slightly in forestallment and clarified. "An on-site guide, Rick. You'll be going with them if you're up for it."

 _There you have it._

Surprised, the author asked, "Wh-when?"

"Everything is being prepared as we speak. So, an hour. Maybe two."

It flew out of Beckett without proper aforethought like a vocal version of the Patellar reflex. "No. No fucking way."

* * *

A/N: Greetings, folks. I wasn't sure I'd be able to come back to this story again. Terrible to say, but true. I had everything written out about a month after the previous update around September last year, but then the laptop it was all stored on was lost before I could do a surprise mass update. Soooo much time. So many words. Gone in a flash. That was damn near heart-breaking. Anyway, enough moaning. That was a causality for a terrible delay, but it won't be an excuse for outright abandonment. I owe sincere thanks to several of you guys, to **bponder** in particular, for sending me a poke now and then to remind me that this project was here, waiting. It's been so long. I hope the tone of fresh writing doesn't seem too different from the prior chapters.


	7. Chapter 7

_Whoopsie._

The words seemed to hang upon the air after being expelled from her mouth. They took a couple moments to fall, like a banner for a surprise party being dropped from the ceiling alongside a shower of multicolored confetti, flapping merrily into place while bearing an absurdly grim announcement: _Surprise, Katie! You're fired!_

A crowd of dumbfounded faces and widened eyes stared back at her, Castle included.

Time recovered from its hiccup and jolted forward on its merciless axis of inevitability. Gates's face took on a murderous pinch. Rick leaned closer at Kate's right as if unconsciously primed to shield her from a physical backlash that wouldn't be forthcoming. She could practically feel Ethan Dickson's sadistic glee building to a crescendo as they awaited the swift downstroke of an ax upon her career.

Deputy Chief Alvarez laughed.

The man's booming mirth was such a fierce counterpoint to the gaping silence that the others twitched in surprised unison. No one seemed more caught off guard by the outburst than the man himself. He wiped at one eye, still chuckling, and commented gaspingly, " _Dios mio._ Apologies, my friend," he added with a stout clap of a palm on Chief Rendell's shoulder. "It was like looking in a mirror."

The ACD grimaced and snarled, "Not by a mile. Trust me on that, you bastard."

That only induced more quivering at the other man's shoulders.

Beckett's cheeks felt like they were _aflame_.

"Sirs," Gates began tightly, clearly furious, "please excuse that outburst. Obviously," she stressed with a seething glare at her subordinate, "my detective's concern for her partner far outweighed her common sense." The Captain had struck the nail squarely upon its head. It didn't seem likely that accuracy was going to translate into much sympathy by way of repercussions. _Damn, damn, damn!_

"Victoria, it's fine," Rendell said and sighed tiredly. He rubbed a pair of fingers into the corners of his gaze and pinched the bridge of his nose. "As our Deputy Chief already intimated, that kind of polarization is a popular sentiment regarding this operation. Given what's headed our way, I'd be surprised if it wasn't."

"Chief," Kate began, "I'm sorry. That's not what I meant to say. Well, it's, er, not how I meant to put it."

"Oh hell," Alvarez issued dryly, still somewhat red-faced, but in control of his amusement again. "We're a little past that now. Speak your mind plainly, Detective Beckett."

Kate shifted uncomfortably with a glance at Castle and then back to the three arranged across from them. She could rattle off a short list of reasons why she didn't want her partner being borrowed. "The storm," she stated succinctly with a splay of both palms. That was the easiest impediment to lean on.

"The worst of it is still several hours off yet," Kirkland spoke up. "We have a small window that should allow us to act if we really must." Should. No one overlooked that little addition. Despite lending his support vocally, she could sense a twin to her surprise and wariness in the ESU team leader's posture. There would be. Like her, he was responsible for assigning tasks to men and women that had families to return to after their shifts. Safety was nothing to gamble with.

"We really must," DC Alvarez stated. It was delivered almost quietly, but adamantly.

"And it _is_ going to be a quick trip," Rendell stressed. "We're only going to have a few good hours on the island. That's why we need a guide. We can't risk taking someone who is anything less than intimately knowledgeable. There isn't going to be time to stop every ten minutes to either pour over maps or to radio someone else who could do so by proxy. No offense, Ricky, but that's why even a civilian element of the NYPD is acceptable."

"None taken. Why the urgency though?" Castle asked. "What did you find that can't wait two or three more days?" The tone of the second question wasn't plaintive, but expectant. It was the next logical thing to be asked really, but the manner of its conveyance brought the fine hairs on the back of Beckett's neck to attention.

All eyes turned to the far end of the table.

"We were getting to that part," Chief Rendell answered calmly with a single nod. "It's not a secret we're hiding from you, Rick. But it is, ah, very sensitive material. That's why I'm trying to get through all of the information we need addressed before getting to that part. Trust me when I tell you that the reason we're all here takes time to digest—time we don't have. While we're on the subject though, let me add this much: we are blacked-out on this matter as far as the media goes. No one here talks to anyone outside of this room about any of this. I'll have your badge and your ass if you do; that's a goddamn promise."

 _Yeesh_. The older man's countenance was more threatening than the words conveyed.

"We're trying to limit the exposure of this case to essential personnel for as long as we can." He took a deep breath and released some of the tension that had knotted in his shoulders and neck. "Having said that, one of the reasons we brought this matter to the Twelfth is because your house has handled cases that were similarly...delicate. You managed, well, one event in particular that I doubt needs expounding upon." Only Rendell and Alvarez seemed to be read-in on the details of the dirty bomb threat that happened last year. The others at the table, excluding Lanie, broadcast confused glances to one another, even Gates.

Beckett shared a look with Castle. Even after all this time, the memory of that case full of near-misses elicited a hint of pallor in the author's features. She could feel a tingle in her cheeks which denoted the same in herself.

"Your house closed that case that without anything getting leaked," the ACD stated. "It's very impressive."

 _You can thank Roy's leadership for providing that unlikelihood._

"You said that was _one_ of the reasons," Castle ventured. It went without saying that the novelist himself was another such causality.

Gates' voice cut in to explain, "We're the only jurisdiction in the city right now that isn't expecting to get hit by those looters organizing themselves online. That we know of," she added meaningfully with a flick of her gaze to Chief Rendell. Apparently, she didn't trust to hope that the East Village would remain unscathed. Their ranking figure either didn't notice her attention or feigned as much. "Most of the other precincts are just as busy trying to place their manpower to deal with that threat as they are preparing for Harbinger via the standard responses."

Silence fell while the others digested that for a moment.

Then the Assistant Chief checked his wristwatch and looked at Tory, "Take us through the rest of the images, please. Ricky, if you could, describe what we're looking at. I need locations and any especially relevant information you can remember because you're going to be retracing Finch's steps when you get there."

Castle exchanged a look with Tory and nodded.

A swap at the screen revealed a riverfront view of the island, presumably taken from a boat. A wide swath of old wooden pilings, two dozen or more, thrust from the water at irregular heights leading in from the river to a large, rusted metal frame, like an upside down 'U', erected upon the bank. The piles must have borne the burden of a sturdy pier once, but that was long gone.

"Easy enough," the author issued with a nod. "That's one of the two old ferry landings, neither of which is viable now, clearly. This is the northwest face. The other option is across the island on the southeast side. This is an appropriate image for us, actually, because it's the first hurdle we need to surmount to attempt a visit. The seawall that the army built combined with the natural rockiness forbids easy landfall beyond these two locations. Frankly, even these two are no simple feat. You don't really dock on NoBro so much as you practically run your vessel aground. The rocks extend out pretty far and the current is swift. It's a rare day that there isn't a small-craft advisory in effect around this part of the East River. You can't just power towards the shore and coast in the rest of the way. Either your momentum will be too great and you'll compromise your vessel, and maybe get hurt in the process, or your speed won't be enough and you'll be peeled away by the flow and swept back downstream."

Lieutenant Kirkland from ESU pointed out, "Finch made it."

"Yes, but Augustus had the luxury of knowing the best time to try and being able to choose that ideal moment. The light in this picture, rather, the absence of it, shows he made this passage early in the morning. Most likely during the shifts of the tide when the water had risen enough to allow an outboard motor to get close despite the rocks but without the full strength of the currents fighting him for every inch. It's a very narrow window that we won't have access to."

"That's a pretty serious problem," Kirkland said with his eyebrows furrowed. "How do _we_ approach?"

"We have others working on that," Rendell stated. "There's a line of people waiting outside to go over the logistics and similar details. Our focus right now is the island itself. Let's stick with that."

Castle didn't look convinced but acquiesced with a nod.

"It's strange," Beckett commented into the brief gap of conversation. "You said you found Finch very early Sunday morning, but this indicates a morning arrival that happened hours later. What day were these pictures taken?"

"Saturday," Tory piped up, "according to their timestamps."

"That doesn't make any sense," Rick agreed. "There are regular patrols around those waters. It's close to Riker's Island, where any craft would be considered a potential security threat. They radio check anyone going through this area. Sometimes their security crafts even escort people by, whether they want it or not. If Augustus arrived Saturday and stayed overnight, someone should have spotted his boat anchored offshore and investigated."

"Unless his vessel was lost before that could happen," Beckett mused, "or taken from him."

They matched stares. She could feel the questions churning behind her partner's gaze. Gears turning within gears, same as hers. If precedent was any indication, their respective mental sprockets were likely spinning along similar courses. Sometimes they seemed downright intertwined, like misplaced parts still turning to the meter of a single, larger mechanism from whence they originally came. She looked over at Dickson, and though she loathed interacting, asked him, "Did you find whatever boat he used?"

"We've been focused elsewhere," the Queens officer replied coolly, glaring back at her.

"Ricky," Rendell cut in again. The man's voice was somewhat strained. His patience with the back-and-forth was clearly waning. "Can you just get us through these images? It's important."

"Yes," the author replied mildly, "let's talk about these pictures for a moment. There's a curious quality to them that doesn't make much sense. Tell me, did you rearrange them out of order on purpose to see if I could recognize the island without any meaningful landmarks to go by?"

The addressed man's eyes widened briefly. His lips came apart, but slammed shut again without reply.

 _That's why the light and shadows look off from one picture to the next. Sonofabitch._

Rick shook his head and sighed inwardly, but he didn't get into a debate about the subterfuge. All he said was, "Whatever you found must be bad." Then focused again upon the screen. "Go on, please, Tory."

Their tech analyst obliged after shooting an uncomfortable glance to the ACD. She wasn't the only one who did.

The next photograph was taken on the island itself again. It was a disquieting sight. From out the foliage which pervaded in-frame arose the stern edifice of a dark-grey building four stories tall and extending out of sight in both directions. The main double doorway sat with one of its portals missing and the other slightly ajar. Broken out windows gaped with blackness. Vines with dried, dead leaves strung whole sections of the facade in a few places.

Richard's voice rumbled to life and dissolved a communal silence. "This is the Tuberculosis pavillon. It's on the north half of NoBro at a closely central position. It never actually saw use in its intended purpose. Its completion coincided closely with the original hospital's closure. The army repurposed it as a barracks for its single male soldiers and a series of office suites. It was reconverted to something closer to its original purpose when this was being used as a drug rehabilitation asylum." He paused, shook his head, and added, "In terms of NoBro's timeline, it's the 'newest' structure on the island."

Lieutenant Kirkland leaned forward in his chair, frowning. "If someone were present on the island—hiding out there, let's say—that'd be the most likely place to find them?"

Castle looked at him and then tilted his guise at the picture, considering. "It's difficult to say definitively. This or the hospital itself would be the surest bets, yes, because they're the most intact. But there are two dozen other structures that have endured enough to potentially serve as shelter. Crude shelter," he added as an afterthought. "This time of year… Well, it's possible if someone were determined."

A glance back at Tory provided the next image and the one after that, and so on. The commentary offered became more succinct from Castle, perhaps indicating mindfulness of time being a factor that was weighing against them.

"That's the old morgue. It served in that function across every incarnation of this place. The similar red-brick building behind it with the smokestacks is the coal house. That fell out of use after the army left. It was shuttered up even while the place was still in operation during the asylum days towards its end. They look intact from the outside, but the roofs are mostly gone. They're full of loose debris and overgrowth."

Even under the circumstances, it was oddly relaxing listening to her partner talk. She got plenty of that on any given day, but not quite like this. When his tone turned instructional, it flowed to a different cadence and volume, very similar to the 'storytelling' voice favored while spinning case theory.

"This is the caretaker cottage, or least that was its last function. It was originally the house provided to the hospital's supervising physician. It's actually more structurally sound than that crumbled entryway suggests, but again, the walls have weakened and the roof is spotty at best. With a few exceptions, this is a fair approximation of what most of the surviving structures resembled the last time I was there."

"Crude shelter," Kirkland reiterated with a nod of agreement. "Good. It narrows down the options."

The next image came up and Tory, squinting at her screen, said, "It looks like most of the rest of these pictures are interior shots. Maybe taken from inside of this big building."

"That sounds about right," Rick agreed with a nod. "This is the hospital itself. It was called Riverside originally. I can't recall now what designation the army applied, if indeed they did. It's more widely known by the grave monicker bestowed during its days as an asylum: The Teeth of Seven Sorrows." A few more exterior shots scrolled by while he continued narrating. "It has three wings, each of which is three stories and together form a basic U-shape. Also present are a pair of sub-levels, which I guess we can call 1 and 2 for now. '1' is a full basement that encompasses all three wings. It contains the 'Agitation' ward of isolated patient cells along the east and west wings, while the center area was used for storage and various utility machinery.

"Sub-level 2, the lower, is about a third of that size from what I recall of the blueprints. There was no designation to indicate its purpose. Whenever we spoke about it, Jonas expressed suspicions that it was a swimming pool with shower areas; something about the orientation of the plumbing and some replacement parts he found elsewhere on the island that belonged to a filtration system. Anyway, it's unconfirmed. Access to that level is made through an east and west stairwell, but neither is functional. The east portal is locked, chained up, _and_ the doorframe has buckled. The west entrance is similarly secured. Structurally, the doorway itself appeared to be in working condition last I saw of it, but there was damage at its stairwell hallway; the ceiling and interior wall had collapsed. Even if the door does work, you can't get to it."

Beckett didn't miss their ranking pair in white exchanging glances.

Alvarez said, "That's some impressive recall, Mr. Castle. Thank you. You mentioned before that this structure in particular was reasonably sound, yes?"

"Well, it is within the context of sudden and lasting abandonment," Rick hedged slowly, his gaze on the images that intermittently flicked by on the screen. "As you can see, there are faltering walls, crumbled ceilings, and rotted floors in several areas. I haven't seen it for myself, but I heard from Jonas that most of the main foyer collapsed into the basement during the winter last year, effectively splitting those two levels in half. There are apparently ways around the blockages, but I'll need to see the extent of the damage for myself in order to find them. I expect the debris from the collapse will make any traversal hazardous.

"It's remarkably intact as a whole though. That's partially owed to the care of its construction, but more so to its design by a rather infamous architect, Damon Trevor. His claim to fame, a dubious and purely posthumous distinction, was bestowed for a strict sense of utilitarianism that mitigated wasted space, even, and perhaps especially, to the exclusion of aesthetic values. I mention that now because the hospital is full of cramped rooms and almost suffocatingly narrow corridors. Trevor's buildings have a habit of enduring the ages quite capably, but they're a claustrophobic person's nightmare."

"That's good information to have," Kirkland confirmed again with a scratch at his bearded chin. "Tactically speaking, it sucks. 'Fish in a barrel' comes to mind. Was the, uh… What was that other big building called?"

"The tuberculosis pavillon."

"Right. Was that built the same way?"

"I'm afraid so. In fact, they delayed its construction by six months just so they could get Trevor back to oversee its design and construction. I guess someone on the board of directors was a sucker for symmetry. That's the extent of Trevor's influence though. Any other structures were either built by army engineers or commercial contractors."

"And you said there were over two dozen of those still standing?" Kirkland clarified.

"More or less. But remember: it's been five years since I...since…"

The way his voice trailed off to silence brought everyone else's attention back to the screen where Castle's was fixated. It held the image of a dim stairwell with a short, debris-strewn hall. That succinct corridor led to one of the aforementioned doors chained shut on the second sub-level. White paint shone at the walls from beneath peeling flakes of a yellow top-coat that still clung to its surface in frayed and brittle curls.

"I thought you said that doorway was buckled," Kate issued once she caught on to what had stalled her partner.

"That's not the east entrance. It's the west. I don't… Augustus must've cleared away the debris. I don't see how he could've—oh, damn. There, on the right edge of the picture frame where it's dark. It goes all the way up like a pillar. He must have cleared away the debris over the course of his last several visits and found materials to brace where the ceiling caved in."

"That's crazy," Dickson stated. "He's lucky he didn't bring the whole thing down on himself."

"Crazy," Castle echoed with a nod of agreement. "Next image, please, Tory."

The west doorway itself comprised most of the following photograph. It looked its age. Paint was faded and peeling from its surface. The chains that had once secured it, visible in the previous image, were absent.

"Next image," Rick requested quietly. It felt like everyone was holding their breath.

"Before you do," DC Alvarez spoke up, "let me warn you again: none of what you're about to see leaves this room. Also...I realize that you're all experienced officers or staff here, but…"

"Don't barf," Dickson inserted into the pause with a faint sneer.

The Deputy Chief looked prepared to lunge across the table to communicate an intense displeasure with the Lieutenant, but the switching of images at the screen stole all attention.

It seemed as though everyone present suffered the same automatic flinch of their bodies once the reality of what they were looking at sank in a few seconds later. There was a collective sound to the moment, something sharp that nestled somewhere between gasps and clipped wordless outcries.

Castle jerked right up out of his seat to stand with his blue eyes gaping wide. In the next instant, he snapped them shut and turned a sharp about-face with an expelled, "Oh God!" She could hear the thumps against the glass walls where his arms lifted and sought it out for support. His forehead made another when he buried his face among the vertically poised limbs and drew them inward as if to shut out even the backwash glow of light from the projector.

Kirkland, his jaw hung agape, genuflected clumsily.

The sight of the Olympic-sized swimming pool piled at its center with human corpses—one coldly discarded atop the other in a single, huge heap—took Kate's breath away. It robbed her of whatever words might have serviced such a sight. As if the central details weren't bad enough, the scene was revealed by spilled shafts of sunlight that poured in from above through windows not visible in-frame. There must have been another cave-in at some point because the pool was bordered by fallen debris and lay bare to the afternoon light above. Radiance from the daystar looked like someone had poured liquid gold over the mass grave. Beauty and horror were wed too intimately to be divided and it only made both options all the more gruesome. The detective found herself reaching blindly out for Rick and not connecting. She was unable to muster the sense needed to find him or even to lower her wayward limb to her side again. It hung in the air as if stuck.

"How fucking many are there?" the ESU officer croaked while likewise abandoning his seat to stand.

"Dozens," Lanie issued, also risen by then, but clutching the table edge for support. Taut knuckles shone palely in the reflected radiance. "Dozens upon dozens." Her expression wasn't visible, but the tone was weak and thready. "Maybe a hundred. Good God, there really could be."

Beckett turned forcibly away from the picture and rose to approach her partner's back. She felt him twitch from the gentle lay of her hands at his left hip and between his shoulder-blades. The writer's trunk swelled and sank with deep breaths in a too-swift rhythm.

"I'm o—" he rasped, but it cut sharply to quiet. "I'm okay. Just...need a minute."

She lingered there with him, rubbing slowly and wordlessly along the channel of his spine while turning at the neck to assess the others.

The three figures sitting at the head of the table were more composed, but not by a mile. Gate's eyes seemed to gleam like onyx gemstones when they fixed for a moment and stared back at her. Rendell and Alvarez waited in silence with both their gazes lowered to the table before them. Even Dickson, who'd made a pathetic show of bravado only moments beforehand, sat with his back squarely to the screen and didn't meet anyone else's stare. He wouldn't look at the screen—wouldn't or couldn't.

"I'm," Beckett started, but she needed to pause to work up enough saliva to speak clearly. "I'm going."

Julian Alvarez met her fiery glare and held it solidly. He was the only one in the room who did.

If her inclusion among the team headed to the island had ever been a question mark, it wasn't any longer. No one else said a word.

* * *

A/N: I was pleasantly surprised to see so many familiar names again. Thank you to those willing to stick with this story. Please note: North Brother Island does exist (though I doubt they really call it 'NoBro') and so does Riverside Hospital, but many details regarding its history and layout have been and will continue to be changed to meet, well, a dearth of available facts, to be frank, but also the needs of the story itself. The pictures available online are interesting though, if you're curious. Thank you for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

When the grave silence ended following her halting announcement, it did so with all the suddenness of a dam bursting its seams. Barely seconds later, every rictus mask of distress was shed before a deluge of questions or comments. Voices raised to be heard over the others. Tempers crackled and flared. Chaos was unleashed.

"So many," Lanie said with her eyes still wide, facing the table again. "My God, how—

"—it possible that this is some kind of hoax?" Gates asked Tory. "Photoshop or something?"

"There're no obvious markers of manipulation, Captain, but we haven't had a lot of time to work with these images."

"—a serial killer," Kirkland was interjecting at the same time, "as in the worst one ever!"

"No way one person did all that damage," Dickson disagreed with a sneer. "Get your fucking head on straight. Who says these people were murdered anyway? You can't see any wounds in that picture. Maybe it's some kinda dumbass cult that sailed out there to share a tub of funny-tasting kool-aid."

"And then what?" Alvarez sneered in turn. "They decided to amass themselves into one big pile for easier clean-up before the poison took effect? Don't be a fool. It's true that this isn't the best picture to judge anything definitive by, but I can pick out several different stages of decomposition. At first glance? I expect we're looking at a succession of deaths that could encompass several months. Maybe even a year or two. Or more," he added with a troubled look to the presently blank screen.

"—need to get a massive forensics effort moving out there," Lanie was urging Rendell. "We're talking about shifting serious amounts of hardware, Chief. It'll take days just to get set up properly. Weeks to actually do the work and get any meaningful answers."

"—team my ass," Kirkland fumed at Gates. "You can't expect me to keep a response group safe with only _six_ of my people. What did he say the surface area was—twenty plus acres?! We need to wait and call Captain Glassman in on this. We need at least three or four ESU teams on that godforsaken island. I'd take them all if I could."

"—people who can handle the forensics. This started in _my_ jurisdiction and it ought to _stay_ my fucking case."

"—not enough time for that kind of intrusiveness," Rendell was firing back at Lanie. "Not yet."

"Then we wait!" she returned shrilly. "That's my whole point. Better to wait than risk contaminating the scene with rushed half measures. We only get one shot at it!"

"—listening to what I'm saying?! It can't be done, Captain!"

"It's going to have to be, Lieutenant!"

"— _eres un cobarde, idiota._ This is a crime," Alvarez was bellowing at Ethan. "People have perished, you mongrel. Alone. Afraid. It's not just a window of opportunity for you to pander to the press!"

Castle, already shaken by the images beforehand, worsened noticeably amidst the verbal tumult. Kate could see and feel his body quivering lightly with the strain of combating both the noise and the terrors of his own imagination. The latter was only fueled to greater life by every proposed scrap of evidence or supposition flying around the room. Both of his hands were curled into fists against the glass.

" _Enough!_ " The thunder of her outcry must have been audible to everyone on the floor. For an unnerving moment, the sight of ranking officers staring back at her, a detective with no actual authority beyond what seniority, experience, and capability granted was damn near overwhelming. Then she felt Castle's quivering hand come to rest against the middle of her back in the seeking a supportive connection. The white-hot blade of protective anger unsheathed on his behalf seared through all trepidation.

"We're going," Kate stated with a level stare at Kirkland. "I don't like it either, John, but the shitstorm we'd be facing if we sat on our hands after discovering something like this would make Harbinger look like a mild fart. The public isn't going to weigh our inaction against the storm. They won't give a shit about the wisdom in acquiescing to safety even for one more day. They'll just start calling for resignations because that's what they've been taught to do in situations they don't understand. I'm sure as hell not giving them mine. We're going."

Kirkland grimaced. He didn't concede, but he didn't argue either.

Beckett focused on the M.E. and continued, "But we're not going to be disturbing the actual scene in that picture while we're there. This is a sweep-and-clear scenario, Lanie." She glanced aside at Rendell for confirmation and received a slight nod. "We'll keep our distance from the second sub-level as much as we can," she explained to her besty, "but can't just not go. If there is a suspect or a group of them on that island, they might already know they're on borrowed time after Finch's explorations. If that's the case, and if there are any other victims being held there, they would become immediate liabilities to their captors."

"Oh, lordy," Lanie murmured, subdued with realization. "O-of course. I get that, honey. The bodies I can make out look like they've been there awhile, so I didn't…shit. I didn't think about more people being hurt in the meantime."

The medical examiner must have been remembering what Castle said about there being isolated cells which could potentially serve the function of harboring prisoners. Beckett's mind, meanwhile, was already leaning more towards the fact that the NYPD was probably over twenty-four hours behind whatever course of action a suspect may or may not have implemented. If there ever had been hostages at stake, they were likely already dead.

Kate forced that aside. _You don't know anything yet._

She set her sights squarely on Dickson. "As for you...I'd be willing to bet that North Brother Island falls under the jurisdiction of the Bronx, not Manhattan or Queens. So, if it's anyone's case it's probably theirs, but if you want in on this so badly—hell, you've got it, Ethan. The truth is, we could use one of the press' darlings to make this situation more palatable when it comes time to make a statement. You can have the taste of publicity we all know you want, but only if you stick to working with our people and keep your mouth shut about it for now. If this leaks prematurely at any point, the One-One-Four is going to be our first fucking stop along the headhunt."

The Lieutenants lips curled with derision in reply.

Beckett strode a single step closer with her face tilting lower into a meaningful glare from beneath the shadows of her brow. "Look at me, asshole. I _want_ you to try taking advantage. Call your press buddies and shout it to the sky. It'll slow everything down for the rest of us. It'll be a pain in the ass. But it'd be worth it to me. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to have you to gift-wrap an excuse for me to bury you."

That did it. Ethan scowled at the empty screen and then back at her. He kept that mouth shut.

She paused, carding a shaky hand back through her hair, and without meaning to admitted aloud, "I'm not caffeinated enough for this shit." It certainly wasn't by design, but the comment induced an unexpected ripple of amusement among her peers. No laughter, merely the glimmers of a smirk or surprised glint of a smile here and there. They were all ready for any offering of levity given the details that had just been under discussion.

Not Dickson. He crossed his arms, still scowling, and asked, "I'd love to know who the hell you think put you in charge, _Detective_ Beckett."

"I guess I did," Chief Rendell inserted ruefully, almost amused, "when I tried to requisition her partner." A shadow of seriousness slowly eclipsed anything else. It settled into the ACD's countenance with no less certitude than the darkening clouds amassing overhead outside. "We're done here for now. There's still plenty more to discuss, but we simply don't have any more time to do it like this. We'll have to finish this up while we keep moving, a little later today. You know where we're going and why. You for damn sure know to keep it quiet. Each of you has a lot of work to do and maybe an hour left in which to do it. I want lists of whatever essential equipment or personnel you need ASAP. Absolutely essential," he reiterated grimly. "Get to it."

Walking out of that room with her badge still attached to her hip was a heady surprise.

Only slightly more so than that was the veritable freight train of people that approached her afterward. They just kept coming.

Tory, Lanie, Joseph Hawkins, a young man from CSU who would be accompanying the team to the island itself, and of course Kirkland. Each was armed with questions or suggestions regarding elements of the impending operation. Gates was still tucked away in the War Room and the availability of other people who knew what was going on was limited, to say the least. Beckett was the face everyone had seen emerge. She was already a beacon of familiarity in terms of shouldering the burden of leadership for her team. So they brought their concerns to her.

She listened bemusedly while Kirkland rattled off a list of the hardware he wanted to bring and why. "This is all fine, John. You want a rule of thumb, right? If we can't carry the gear directly on our persons, it's probably not coming with us. We're scoping this place out, remember, not occupying it."

Beckett nodded along like a bobblehead as Lanie and Joseph discussed what equipment they thought the team should bring in order to assess the crime scene from its peripherals, laying some groundwork for the eventual invasion of both their offices' respective personnel. "You guys, damn. We're going to have two, maybe three hours. Less, really, if you factor in time-of-travel and any potential complications. Don't bring anything you can't make use of within that limited timeframe, okay? Cameras, scene lighting, sample containers, yes, of course. What the fu—okay, wait." She stopped long enough to jab at their combined print-out exasperatedly. "The trace evidence vacuum is a definite no. That crate is over twenty frigging pounds all by itself! Be realistic, you guys, jeez."

She left the two of them howling at one another in her wake.

Tory caught up with her next. The slender analyst-and-more was working with a crew from One-PP to outfit the response team with audio and visual equipment for the purposes of communication and documentation. Beckett, eyes blooming wide, hastily shot down an astoundingly expensive list of new gear that the woman was waving around. She gave the tech analyst the names she knew from requisitions officers that could hopefully offer up suitable approximations from the Twelfth and other nearby precincts. If nothing else was achieved that day, she could at least claim to have managed to prevent bankrupting Homicide's operating budget for the next six months.

Finally, though the last encounter proved the most difficult of all, Beckett managed to beg off the tirade of questions and wounded stares from Ryan and Esposito. Her teammates relented only after she promised to put their names in for being read into the case and added to the investigation team. Not to accompany her and Rick to the island—there was no way that would fly so close to the last minute, not even for Espo who had ESU experience. She had something else in mind for the pair to look into. "I'm already seeing signs of the trend we always seem to slam into when larger events come into play like this: people forget about the victim that prompted it all. But that's our job. Finch isn't getting lost in the shuffle. Um, shit. You didn't hear that name, got it? Uh, anyway, if I can get Rendell to clear you guys, I'll let you know where we're going to get started."

God. That entire shitstorm began and ended within a mere twenty-minute gap. Is that what being Captain Gates was like? How the hell did anyone manage a pace like that for a full, solid workday? A week of such workdays? Most other cases weren't so high profile, of course, but many that came through demanded similar juggling acts between departments and precincts. To hell with that. Then again, she mused while closing out of her email, there had been a curious brand of invigoration attached to it all. Directing the flow of everyone's efforts into a single, effective stream of progress. Knowing what needed to be done and in which order.

It was...interesting.

If Beckett didn't know better, she might have suspected her partner of putting everyone up to hounding her like that. Their conversation in her sedan after arriving earlier had bloomed to temporary life right before their eyes. But the writer had hardly seemed aware of the goings-on throughout it all. He'd been stewing in the chair beside her desk. He didn't look up when her phone rang that last time and didn't question their destination when she hung up a minute later and coaxed him into following her.

Stepping into the precinct's east stairwell was a jarring transition. The gaping absence of clamor elicited a pause to adjust. She turned some at the waist to look back at Rick, but his focus was still locked in a state of staring forward and slightly to one side. Seeing but unheeding. She knew. It was impossible not to know. He was already miles ahead of her within his mind, walking alone among the overgrown flora and skeletal buildings on North Brother Island.

The coolness of her fingers slid into the wider gaps of his warmer ones. It didn't break that thousand-yard gaze, but his digits curled automatically like someone grabbing at a lifeline. All she wanted at that moment was to pull him in closer at her back and feel his arms slant opposingly across her. Feel the capable breadth of his hands spreading wide. It was an almost staggering desire, the wish for a sliding sound of fabric as her shirt shifted and wrinkled under his influence, lifting against the imposition of his wrist while he sought bare flesh underneath. She needed him to discover the delicious contradiction to his masculinity by sliding beneath the cups of her bra to curl and warmly encompassing feminine curves. If he had done that, even at such an unforgiving time, she would have been incapable of resisting. On the contrary, Kate would have lifted her arms around his neck, stroked her fingers deep into his trimmed hair, and arched herself into him like a cat stretching lazily in the sun.

The imagery alone screwed the dark-haired woman's nipples into hidden, turgid peaks. It drew a diminutive shudder from her shoulders that rippled down her spine.

Kate couldn't account for the horrible timing or sudden urgency of her arousal—the need for him by touch, taste, and blissful force. Except to note that it would be a devastatingly effective means of capturing and keeping his focus firmly in the present. _If only it were so simple as fucking away your worries._

For all she knew, it very well could be. God. She wanted to know. Needed to. Badly.

Twin pools of muted blue, fully aware again, spilled unto her half-shuttered pair. They diverted to take in their current surrounds and returned again while his eyebrows lifted fractionally at their peaks. She felt his thumb smooth across her knuckles. He gleaned her distraction but not its underlying source.

What could she possibly say?

The detective turned and led the way downstairs. She swallowed a sigh and pressed her free palm flat against the gnawing sense of emptiness at her erotic core. The man following closely behind mistook the gesture for a different manner of hunger and began a mildly reproving stream of commentary on the merits of a healthy breakfast while they followed the stairwell down and around, down and around, landing by landing.

It was a little irksome to be chided, but the leader of the duo voiced no complaint.

The dimness of late-morning light didn't stream through the windows they passed between floors. It seemed reluctant to intrude and clung to the dimensions of each casement, fashioning them into ghostly glowing squares. It was plenty to navigate by but sharpened the chill in the air simply by its lack of being unfettered sunlight.

Castle's ruminations about proper nutrients shifted gradually back to the meeting they had recently left, as if talking about sustaining life were a reminder of its utter absence where they were soon headed. He wasn't theorizing so much as reiterating details of the conversations that had occurred and musing over them aloud to himself.

Beckett voiced no complaint about that either.

When they reached the doorway of the sub-basement Castle stopped and said, "Hold on. What're we doing down here anyway? The gym?" He peered in through the small window of the awaiting doorway, perplexed and budding with curiosity. "Did I miss something?"

"I know I did," Beckett muttered under her breath while nudging him back a pace and pressing the heavy portal wide. She added more audibly as they continued, "We have to gear up. Or were you planning on exploring NoBro in that outfit?" She had barely finished the question before three ESU members strode out of the men's locker room together. They were donned in full tactical apparel wrought in flat, intimidating black. The only things missing were the helmets.

Whether he knew it or not, and she suspected he did, Kirkland had done well by her in at least some of his selections.

Ulan and Eamon Connelly, both thirty-four this year, were dauntingly capable members of the emergency service unit. Fair-skinned, brown-haired, and green-eyed, the monozygotic twins towered at six-and-a-half-feet with powerful builds that would be at home on any football field. They were monsters.

The third man with them was unknown, but...damn. He was flat-out gorgeous. A Yankees ballcap was word turned backward on his head. It emphasized the cleanly chiseled quality of unblemished patrician features. Mid-twenties, she initially guessed but quickly swapped that for a suspicion of late-twenties for reasons she couldn't have rightly explained. Something about the way he carried himself. It was almost funny to see the guy leading the way for the twins at his more diminutive five-foot-ten. His physique was somewhat leaner than theirs, but not by leagues. She discerned ripples of capability in his forearms where the sleeves of his uniform were pushed oh-so-casually back. It slanted from the back of his neck along developed trapezii muscles. And from an agape neckline just barely visible beneath his tac-vest, capability swelled subtly at the mouth of a pronounced pectoral valley. The blended synthetic fabric of his pants was pressed into smooth expanses across the thickness of a runner's thighs.

The stranger's eyes were a vibrant blue that burned like gas-flames. Their owner locked onto her from a distance and did a little tour of her figure without any discernible impact. Then diverted to Rick and did the same. It was almost disappointing. That once-over stated with embarrassing clarity: _You're swell and all, lady, but even you are out of your league this time_. Unwittingly or no, the bastard made her feel every single one of her thirty-one years.

Beckett shucked away her previous admiration and decided to dislike the man intensely.

As is privy to that estimation, the sonofabitch smiled at her with the most radiant and flawless rows of choppers she'd ever seen. _Fuckin'-A. Are you kidding me?_

She stumbled a half-step forward after being nudged in the back by Castle. The sneaky little smirk he shot her implied _way_ too much awareness of her attention for the newcomer given the brevity of the staredown she'd allotted. The absence of jealousy in her counterpart's guise did not go overlooked by her—that was an admittedly sexy sidenote. Still, she elbowed the writer sharply back in his gut before continuing to march forward and meet the trio halfway. He rewarded her with a pained little grunt.

The pairing of groups converged near the center of the gym. Pale, faux hardwood flooring gleamed like a freshly polished gemstone beneath the light from high-placed basement windows.

"Detective Beckett," one of the giants rumbled by way of greeting.

That had to be Eamon. He was the talker. She could count the number of times she'd heard Ulan speak on the fingers of one hand. It was very rare to encounter the twins apart from one another. Kate couldn't recall a single circumstance where the opposite had been the case.

"Hi, Eamon. Ulan. I'm guessing you're headed with us this morning, huh?"

"We'll have your backs," Eamon confirmed. Ulan nodded once. "Strange op," the former added, but he didn't actually sound concerned. No frown or the like disturbed those level features, but that wasn't abnormal. Neither of the twins was terribly reactive. She'd never once seen either of them smile. Such a thing might have granted them a bit more appeal. They weren't handsome per se. The pair conveyed stalwartness and strength far more than sex appeal. Their visages were a little too broad for the last. Their wide jaws leaned just a notch too forward in their set. They brought to mind a pair of pit-bulls, which was an odd, ill-suited association really; for all their imposing height and breadth, in Kate's experience, they were inordinately gentle. How they wound up in such potentially violent careers was a mystery for the ages.

"Strange," the female detective echoed with a couple swift nods. "I'm glad to know you'll be going with us for it. Uh, I don't think you've actually met my partner before. Richard Castle." She stepped aside to gesture at Rick with a dramatic flourish, just because she suspected the author might appreciate a little theatricality. Sure enough, it bent his lips into subtle lifts at their edges. _Always worth a sprig of extra effort._ "Castle, this is Eamon and Ulan Connelly, Sergeant and Officer, respectively."

The twins nodded in stoic unison. It might have been comical with less intimidating specimens.

"I'm pleased to finally meet you both. Your reputations precede you," the author explained with an easy affability. "I work with Javier Esposito too—he's shared a story or two where your names came up. It's always with respect."

Neither of the men said anything to that, which was quintessential Connelly. Castle didn't know it, but the twins had been part of the team that was stacked up and ready to charge into a wired-up warehouse back when they'd teamed up with Jordan Shaw on the Dunn case. The author had saved both their lives along with the other ESU members that night. The Connelly boys knew. _Kirkland must too. Either that or the twins volunteered._ Either way, she was feeling quite secure in the choice of team members thus far.

Well, minus one.

"And last but certainly not least, ah'm Logan Devereux," the unfamiliar figure stated with a resurgence of that blinding grin and with aggravatingly pointed timing. "It's mah pleasure to meet ya both." Damn. It wasn't enough that he looked good. The guy spilled charisma with liquid ease like a faucet with a fatal leak. Kate couldn't place his accent beyond it being something southern, but it was thick and somehow entirely too fitting.

She flatly ignored his outstretched hand. _You're gonna be Trouble, I just know it. Capitalization firmly implied._

The only confirmation needed for that supposition was the fact that Castle met Logan's grin width for width with his eyes narrowed in obvious delight. Their hands gripped the others and pumped with a vigor one might expect of friends that hadn't seen one another in far too long. Instant connection. _Fan-freaking-tastic,_ Beckett thought with an inward, long-suffering sigh. Truthfully, it lightened her heart a little to see her partner respond with enthusiasm for someone other than herself. That didn't happen quite as often or to the same degree as it used to.

"C'mon ov'ah here, you two. We have some gear for yah both that'll help keep yah dry an' warm. More so than what yah got on now anyway. Ah heard we're headed somewhere deliciously creepy," Logan confided to Rick as if that were breaking news. Barely withheld excitement gleamed at his gaze.

"Oh my God," Castle began by way of agreement with an enthused clap and grip of the other's shoulder. "You have no idea. It's the Munsters meet Doctor Moreau. You may pee in your pants a little."

A rumbling soar of melodic laughter escaped Logan as the pair branched off together. They continued on towards the benches outside the nearby locker rooms where two black duffle bags awaited. Their chatter became a steady stream, dual baritones conspiring and giggling in stereo.

"He must be new," she remarked to the twins with a crinkling of her nose. "Is he worth anything?"

"Devereux isn't ESU," Eamon answered.

"What?" Beckett lowered her voice even though neither of the two beyond them looked back at her elevated inquiry. "Why the hell is he part of this operation?"

"Well, technically, he's an employee of the city with all of the proper licenses, which makes him a viable a resource to tap. The difference is that his intended purpose in being here is to conduct a marksmanship training program over course of the next several months. It's unusual to extend those duties like this, but so is the circumstance."

Beckett felt herself scowling and couldn't stop. "He's a private contractor?" Her track record with The Circuit—the moniker applied to the privatized military industry as a whole—was spotty at best. At worst, it was downright hostile. Lockwood had been a mercenary. Coonan had been a fucking merc. Two shitty examples didn't negate the fact that PMC's provided a huge portion of specialized training for militaries and police agencies around the world and did so capably without any trouble or other ill-effects. Even so, the examples Kate had to go by sure as hell didn't inspire any confidence. _I was right from the get-go. Let's keep hating the guy._

"He's the third contractor to come through the NYPD in a year," Eamon said. Maybe he was attempting to normalize the idea a bit and thereby dispel some of her concern. It didn't work. That must have been apparent because the giant of a man gazed askance at Logan and Rick with an eyebrow ascending a notch above one tea-leaf-hued eye. "You want us to keep an eye on him while we're out there?"

"I'm going to have Kirkland drop his ass from the roster," Beckett replied and sighed in annoyance for the addition of that unexpected task to an already prodigious list. "We can't afford the distraction of keeping one eye on our six the whole time."

Eamon frowned but didn't say anything. Beckett was familiar enough with the twins to know that this particular brand of silence was often the precursor for something else waiting to be said. Annoyingly, neither man allowed themselves to be rushed. She was probably part of a decidedly small club that was given to trying on occasion. Presently, however, she endured the thoughtful pause without interrupting. "He seems legit to me," the big man finally stated. Ulan nodded once in agreement at his left. The more talkative brother rubbed at the back of his neck as if embarrassed to be contradicting her, but continued, "With us being such a small group headed to a comparatively large area of engagement...we could use someone like him if there's trouble."

Kate frowned in turn. She trusted her instincts. She was strongly inclined to trust Ulan and Eamon's too though. It was damned rare that the Connelly's gave anyone a summary endorsement, good or bad. The fact that Castle had taken such an immediate shine to the man wasn't without merit either. In this case, her gut was definitely biased. _For good fucking reason,_ a voice growled from within. On the other hand, anyone approved to work for the city of New York would be vetted under a microscope. No one would risk bad press by hiring some whack-job. Similarly, no PMC would send in anyone that didn't have a squeaky clean track record. They'd want any face representing their company to be unassailable.

She looked at Eamon again and asked, "He's that good?"

The other shifted his stance with some discomfort and replied, "Ask me again when we all get to the 34th street pier. You can see for yourself."

"Ah shit. Are we taking boats all the way upriver? I was afraid of that. Fine," she expelled with another quiet sigh. "I'll do that. I have to admit, I'm curious about someone you two would pipe up for."

"He kinda reminds us of your partner," the other stated, but frowned slightly after saying so with a shift of the muscle at one daunting bicep. "From what we've seen and heard about Castle anyway. Hmm. I can't really explain the reason for drawing an association between them though. Just a feeling."

"I could hedge a goddamn guess," Kate stated dryly while she observed the pair from afar. Logan was holding up a cell phone and taking snapshots while Rick scrunched his lips, pouted them outward in faux menace, and flexed his muscles around the bulkiness of a tactical vest.

 _Fuck my life._

"Yeah," Eamon issued slowly, drawing the syllable out somewhat in an expression of seeming bemusement towards the other mens' behavior, "that's not really what I meant." His brother flipped his eyebrows at the sight of the pair, almost like the facial equivalent of a shrug. "But that too, I guess."

"Ugh. Okay, damn, we need to gear up. I'll catch up with you guys again at the pier. And hey...I meant what I said before. I'm glad you're going with us on this one."

The pair of men nodded with characteristic neutrality.

Beckett strode away and up to her partner who she snagged by the tac-vest with a sharp yank. "Come on, badass, the clock is running down fast and you and I still need to talk. Alone," she added peevishly with a baleful squint at Logan. She snatched up one of the duffle bags full of gear. Rick grabbed the other without needing to be told.

The mercenary flashed them that flawless grin unabashedly and tipped an imaginary hat before they slipped into the privacy of the men's locker room.

* * *

"I see you're making friends," Kate deposited mildly. The duffle bag was heavy, biting into the flesh of her palm. The weight was more painful for muscle fibers that were still in the slow process of healing. Her burden thunked dully onto the long wooden bench stretching out before the row of nondescript grey lockers spanning the north wall. The sound of its impact swallowed up her sigh of relief.

"He's fun," the author returned amusedly.

"He's a mercenary," she said and paused while unzipping the duffle with a sharp whizzing noise. "Don't let your guard down with him, okay?"

"Yeah, he said as much."

"He told you?" she blurted in surprise. _Huh._

"Isn't something like that supposed to be common knowledge?"

"Well...yeah. I suppose." She frowned and laid out the provided array of thermal layers, the blended synthetic articles that would be worn over the former, and a black tac-vest fashioned of canvas and multi-weaved nylon. Sheets of Kevlar plating were already inserted into the appropriate pockets. "I guess I expected him to hide it if he could," she added while peeling off the slim-fit sweater. "Y'know, the kind of deceptiveness we've gotten from others in his line of work."

"Yeah. Our, uh, track record there is nothing short of abysmal," Castle agreed quietly.

"You said it." Kate huffed and dropped the folded sweater to one side. The white camisole was no less difficult to discard despite being a looser fit. Her range of overhead motion was still limited. She had to shuffle out of either sleeve and duck her head while easing the gap at the neckline over and off. "Are you sure you're okay with doing this? I'm not talking about Logan anymore. I mean—

He cut in with nothing more than a gentle murmur. "I know what you mean, Kate. I'll be okay."

God. It was still an affecting thing when he used her first name, nevermind when it slipped out so quiet and intimate as it had. She started to turn around but jolted to a halt at the feel of his still clothed chest coming to rest against her back. The glide of his fingers curling over the slopes of her shoulders was almost too much. It wasn't nearly enough. The slim straps of black from her bra were an infuriating barrier between them even in their near-insignificance.

Despite herself, a lick of arousal came easily and eagerly to life. It hadn't retreated anywhere near far enough after that moment on the stairs. "What're you up to?" she tried to ask sternly. It came out throaty, laced with an unfortunate undercurrent of receptiveness. "I, uh, did mention the time thing, yeah?"

Her left arm twitched with the surprise of feeling his fingers slip between her bicep and her left side. "If you wanted this over quickly, you should've diverted to the women's locker room." His touch drifted lower. Kate bit her lower lip to contain the urge to stop him. _Don't. Don't...touch that. Not there._ Rick found the incision scar as easily as if he'd carved it into her himself. "You know, I have this pristine recollection of touching you here before this scar. It's weird because it happened quickly at the time. I didn't choose that spot in particular. I just happened to brush it with the backs of my fingers while you were pulling my arm around you that night we spent together in the Hamptons, over a year ago now." Kate swallowed while he illustrated that memory for her presently. She was a little dazed, wholly uncertain what the words were meant to convey. Wondering proved unnecessary. "That memory is already altered. I recall the touch, but I can't actually remember you feeling any way except the way you do right now."

That...hurt with an unexpected amount of force. It made her so goddamn sad. For him.

There had been some shred of comfort in the knowledge that their limited advances of physical intimacy had at least extended far enough to precede her wounds. He got to experience her unblemished at least once. Yet the reality of the skin in which she stood presently somehow managed to take that night of closeness away from them. Maybe a detail like that shouldn't matter so much, but it did. Warmth bloomed behind her eyes. She closed them rather than give in to even the first stirrings of infuriating tears. She was still here. With him. There was nothing more meaningful than that. You don't cry after being given such a gift. You hang onto it with everything you have.

"I love the feeling of you now—like this."

Kate blinked, opened her eyes, and turned somewhat to glance back at him in confusion. The angle didn't quite allow the connection.

"Is that strange? I can't help it. This is a mark of passage denoting your survival," he explained. "You came back to me. And then today, because of this, you were able to literally come back to me." Her partner's brow furrowed and his face dipped out of sight amidst the lay of his forehead upon the slope of her right shoulder. "Thank you. God, Kate. Thank you. I could've waited longer if you needed me to. I still can if this feels like too much too soon, I promise. For right now though, I'm...I'm so happy you're here."

"I missed you so fucking much," she managed tightly, though it was barely audible. Warmth flooded to unheeded wetness. The detective fought through the grip of emotion strangling her voice and lent it enough strength to tell him more clearly, "I thought about you every day. I need you to know that, babe. Keeping myself apart long enough to heal-up was the hardest thing I've ever done. You'll never know how many times I almost caved and went to you over the summer. Or how much comfort it gave me just knowing you were out there. Someone to work towards. I couldn't bring myself to come back if I wasn't going to be able to stay. I finally have because I am. Now."

Castle's arms slid inward more with a most welcome invasion. They curled about her middle in an encompassing embrace that was more talkative than even his capable words. He was so warm compared to the coolness of the downstairs. His heat outshone what felt like her ever-present absence of it these days. The well-known notes of his cologne and the texture of his dress shirt against her back and sides, the feel of his breath alive and so painfully real against her hair...

She smoothed along the length of one of his arms and threaded their fingers together at her belly, a tangle of tan and pallor. Summer and winter. "I love you."

* * *

A/N: It probably goes without saying that not every update will be so readily available. I pop them out as life and its responsibilities allow, same as anyone. Also, I know this chapter kinda tugs the pacing back a notch. I'm still iffy about it on that note, but I figured: if there's one nice thing about writing fanfic versus some novel or the like, it's that we're pretty much expected to detour into scenes like this where we get to watch these two get closer. Why fight a good thing, right? Thank you for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **11:42 AM, 1st Avenue - 34th Street Pier**

"What was it that you wanted to discuss earlier?"

Beckett glanced aside at him in the passenger seat, blinked twice in confusion at the traffic ahead, and then twinged with belated recollection. "Dammit," she expelled softly. Rick hummed with amusement, prompting another darted glance from her and a chiding, "Hey, I would've remembered if _someone_ had kept their hands to themselves."

When she'd gotten stripped down to her underwear and bra in the locker room earlier, he'd eased on in again with those large, warm hands and painfully communicative eyes to wordlessly coax her into a seat upon the bench. Then he'd crouched like a dutiful knight before his queen and dressed her, piece by piece, in the articles of ESU gear. Minus about a dozen pounds of menacing hardware that the others were loaded down with. They only needed twenty minutes to get ready. It sure felt like longer.

"Maybe I would've," Castle began airily but paused in consideration of a decent retort as the line of traffic ahead stacked up beneath a red light. "If," he continued before losing all momentum, "you had honestly wanted me to. Clearly, you didn't. Or are you in the habit of wearing black underwear with lace accents on police raids?"

The detective's eyes gaped and her mouth opened as if to berate him. It hung wide for an idle second. Then she let her lips curve and the whole expression slyly opened up into a full-length, flashing grin complete with a lusty wink. She slowly touched a finger to the tip of her nose. _You got me there, handsome._

Man, the look on his face. She'd managed better only minutes ago, but it was still good.

"Keep it up, lady," he warned peevishly alongside an uncomfortable shift in his seat. "You're gonna get it." The fact that her companion was rattled enough to forsake proper grammar for an informal contraction elicited the same glee as putting a dart through a balloon at a carnival. He pretended not to notice while she chortled over her prize.

The man's ire, clearly exaggerated, was not unwarranted. Far from it.

After they finished changing, the two of them had joined a cluster of mixed personnel outside the pair of roll-up metal doors of the precinct's motor pool. A caravan of varied unmarked vehicles was idling in the sprawling, underground garage, waiting for a proper gathering before it would hustle them all to the 34th Street Pier. As the others present milled about or gabbed, Kate had feigned a yawn, leaned aside to where Rick stood at her right against her sedan, and murmured close to his ear, "Hey, I was thinking: when we get off this island later? I'm gonna drag you into the closest quiet corner we can find and suck your dick until you forget your own name."

The author's surprised gape had been complete. The sheer, staggering absence of knowing what to say or do that had been written across his face was the funniest thing she'd seen in a long time. What really made the moment shine was having managed to contain her amusement. One lasting look into her determined hazel eyes elicited a deep furrowing at his brow and a soft grunt as if she'd elbowed him in the gut again.

"Well, you've certainly blown one organ," he'd mumbled dazedly while cradling a palm against his head, and she'd almost died.

 _Heh._ _Poor guy._ To say that turnabout is fair play on the issue of flirtation would be remiss. Rick was very good. Disarmingly imaginative and absolutely fearless in the comfort of experience that shaped his own sexuality. Even so, Kate stood on advantageous high-ground. He simply wasn't accustomed to being the one chased around or leered at by her. It didn't take much to render him momentarily startled or speechless. Even amidst this gloomy and darkly disturbing day, she was compelled to shine for him when possible.

That wasn't all about fun and games. The man's easily garnered surprise was amusing, charming even, but it was also a rather pointed indication that a long road lay ahead in making him feel secure and comfortable within the confines of her love. Time was the only surefire cure. Time and the steady administration of her dirty-minded approximation of medicine.

An unexpected side-effect of that prior teasing was that no one else had been allowed to accompany them in her sedan. Castle had tersely refused any attempted occupancy, though with each refusal his gaze hardly seemed to leave hers. She'd held his awareness in kind with a barely-concealed, predatory smile. No charming new mercenary buddy. Not even Ryan and Espo were granted seats, both of whom she'd actually needed to talk to. _Oops. Over-shot a bit there, yeah._ _Live and learn._

Presently, now more than halfway to their next transitory destination, Kate slowed their progress to keep a small berth between them and the dark SUV ahead. They did have more to talk about than getting into one another's pants. He was right. Now that the proposed dialogue had found its way back to the forefront of her mind, playfulness waned some. With a clearing of her throat, she finally said, "We really shouldn't be doing this."

Rick's eyebrows soared while he shot her an alarmed glance.

"Going to the island," the detective clarified and tamped down the urge to scowl when he looked momentarily relieved. Knowing that they only needed time to adjust did not diminish the sting of seeing the man turn gun-shy like that. _One step at a time, Katie._ "It's not even about where we're going," she continued. "I wanted us to have a chance to talk before working on _any_ new cases. I should've come see you a week or more ago, damn it. It's just...what you told me earlier this morning? I'd noticed that too. Last time we came together after being apart for a while, the work seemed to help you find solid footing. I thought that kind of traction might be helpful for you again."

"We seem to be finding our stride just fine," Castle observed with an eyebrow slanting in mute accusation. Amusement and affection hid behind the thin veil of feigned petulance for the torment she was inflicting upon him today. _Heh._ That wounded semblance gradually sobered into genuine neutrality. "What's on your mind?"

"Oh, I'm sure you already have an idea." He didn't voice a denial, which made her breathe a bit easier. No effort was made to hide. For a couple that had spent years dancing around their obvious chemistry, they were getting pretty good at candidness. "Honestly, we should've had this conversation a long time ago—after the warehouse with Lockwood. Things ended up working out fine then. So well, in fact, that I was able to forget about the conversation it made me wanna have with you."

Richard shifted in his seat again with evident unease. "Did Gates put you up to this? Or Rendell?"

Beckett rolled her eyes and glanced out the side window while they waited for a green light to get the caravan of vehicles moving again. "No, but I'm sure they're worried too. They have the right to be." Her attention went seeking only to find his likewise cut adrift from her and staring out the passenger window. "There's a reason team-members don't usually get involved with one another."

Still the writer deflected the heart of the subject she was trying to aim them at. "Are they going to try to split up our team?" The way he asked prompted a small swell of pride. It was posed as one seeking clarity of a potential challenge, not as a preemptively defeated concession to one.

"Not unless we make it a problem." Kate finally reached out to curl her grasp around his left forearm. That drew his gaze. Clear, sky-toned-hues jerked to their physical connection before lifting to meet her earthy-toned pair. "I'm not asking if this is going to be one, okay? I think we both know that it will at some point. And that's okay," she soothed before returning her grasp to the wheel. "No one expects our dating to not make waves here and there. It doesn't automatically disqualify our partnership. We can still do both _if_ we can be professional." She faced forward again as traffic moved but rejoined his lingering attention when the brevity of the light locked them into a holding pattern again. "Now, uh, part of that professionalism necessitates asking you about this. So, please just let me." She said as much and yet prevaricated afterward with a moistening of her lips before diving on in. "I need to know that you still have faith in me to do this work."

"Beckett, of course, I—"

"Don't," the detective interrupted. "Don't toss it out there thoughtlessly. I need the truth, not some knee-jerk denial. I'm not talking about critical thinking in the casework or the confidence needed for leadership. I heard you earlier; I know we're good there. This job goes beyond either of those things." Traffic eased forward again, sending them bumping further along 1st Avenue. The East River Promenade was visibly deserted on their right, a grayish span of openness in the pallid midday light. "You saw me," Kate stopped, swallowed thickly. At her peripherals, his visage hadn't wavered. She started again from a slightly different angle. "When you see someone the way you saw me in the cemetery...in that state of, uh, vulnerability...it can change your outlook on their capabilities." He tsked in disgust and sat up straighter in obvious protest. She found herself sitting more erect in kind and resumed before he could interrupt. "It's not an insult, okay? I wouldn't take it as one if you had any doubts."

The silence that exuded from his side of the car seemed to be threaded together using sewing needles and razor blades. Several distinct, cutting seconds passed and each felt like a wound. "I really hope you posed that scenario the way you did for my benefit—needless as it was. Because if I thought you really believed that getting shot by some coward hunkering in the grass a hundred yards out was a commentary on your capability as an officer…" He didn't finish except to shake his head and face forward in his seat.

 _Phew_. "Okay then," she replied quietly, "that answers that."

"Do you have any other foolish questions?"

Her cheeks burned even though he hadn't laced the inquiry with genuine disdain. "Th-there's more to this subject than just my half of it, yeah. You know what I'm talking about." That was why she'd brought up the scenario with Lockwood. Maybe that night didn't ordinarily stand out for him the way it did in her memory. That would make sense; he hadn't seen himself the way she had, straddling an adversary beaten bloody with one brutal fist poised to keep right on hammering away. To the author's credit, he had stopped himself before administering lethal or even lasting damage. But the look on his face at the time…

That encounter was before the trauma of watching her get shot. Before he watched her flatline on the way to the hospital. Twice.

It brought Lanie's words back to mind for the thousandth time since hearing them: _He was like one of those animals you read about, driven savage._

"You're the best man I know," Beckett stated quietly. She winced, wishing it was possible to take that back. Veracity soaked every syllable like moisture in a sponge. It still sounded like pandering.

"Wow," Castle issued flatly with a half-turn to look at her. "When you said everyone looks like a murderer to you, that was no idle observation, was it?"

"Anyone would be when someone they love is on the line," Kate returned a bit sharply. "Don't think for a fucking second _I_ wouldn't be on _your_ behalf. The difference between us is that I went through a lot of specialized training designed to help me tamp down those initial emotional reactions and think first. I... Dammit. I don't really know how to describe it for you. Imagine if you were given one, maybe two full seconds of logic before that rush of adrenaline and emotion demanded to take over. That's what _years_ of experience and continued training have purchased: a couple lousy seconds. Not much at all when you think about it."

"They matter." The other's tone and posture didn't broadcast any willingness for agreement. Only the words themselves conceded as much. "They do. Two seconds could decide the difference between me attempting to help arrest someone who hurt you, or ending them."

Kate reached blindly out and found his left shoulder around which to curl with a sliding squeeze. "Cops don't end anyone unless there's no other choice. You know what I mean," she added when he furrowed his brow in a show of doubt. "Obviously, shit happens. I'm not saying it doesn't. In fact, that's one more detail working against us right now. That's what Rendell and Gates are wondering to themselves when they think about us: if other cops who date each other can't control their emotions in high-tension situations, how can we expect a civilian to do it?"

"NoBro is abandoned."

Beckett stared back at him with blank disapproval. He knew damn well she wasn't talking about the island. That operation was already in the process of happening. It was as good as done. It was relevant, sure, but her concern was focused on cases and events that loomed in the days farther ahead. They needed to be ready for any blowback they might take for being a couple in the field.

"Okay, well, what if I could get certified in the same training?"

 _Better_ , she mused approvingly but still shook her head once with a quivering of her hair in its bun. "It isn't a class they teach openly like that. This kind of stuff isn't something you put in the hands of people who might abuse it. Trust me, you don't want to start from scratch at the police academy simply to prove your worth and get it."

"What?" he fired back with a narrowing of his eyes. "You don't think I could handle the obstacle course? I'm buff."

Beckett snorted against her will. That was a quintessential example of what he did—what he _was_ —for her and so many others: a glimpse of light when things turned dark. The woman gave a sideways assessment of him, head-to-toe, while moistening her lips again. "Yeah," she confirmed with a deceptively conversational tone, "you are one finely honed model of masculine might."

"Oh my, yes," he growled throatily. "Talk alliteratively to me, baby."

Kate laughed aloud. _Even on the worst days, I swear…_ No one watching would ever guess where they were headed. Maybe they should have been showing more respect for their impending destination, but… So much time had already been lost. One life was all they had together.

"I'm not looking for a neat and tidy solution," she managed at length. "I didn't bring up either subject now because I expected you to be able to do that. There isn't one. Not really. I just want you to try and keep it in mind as we go, that's all. We're under the microscope. More so than normal."

A wordless sound of concession emerged from the passenger seat. They were silent for a few minutes afterward. Maybe he was processing the conversation again in his mind too. Eventually, his voice arose again tinged with curiosity. "Speaking of police academy days, I heard your strife with Lieutenant Dickson goes back that far. You two came up through training together, huh?"

 _Thanks for nothing, Espo._ Beckett sighed inwardly. She wasn't surprised. _I can't expect you not to go looking for the story at this point, can I?_ When they paused at another red light, now less than four blocks from the 34th Street pier, she gazed aside at her partner. "It's a touchy subject. No, no," she added, "we can talk about it. Those first few years after Mom died? They were bad, obviously. In a way, they honed my focus to a razor edge. The training itself? I killed it. I was like a machine and the NYPD was my solitary function. Things were, um, a lot messier on the personal side of the line. Dad was drinking. My impatience to be able to hold Mom's case file in my own two hands was nearing critical mass. I managed to get myself into some pretty surreal situations." She looked away with another girding breath inward.

"You don't need to worry about me thinking less of you, Beckett. You should also know that I'm only asking for what you're ready to share. That's no less than what you gave me. There's time available to us now. Use it if you need it." Only a man who believed in things like magic, fate, and happy endings could convince himself that they would ever feel entirely secure given everything leading up to where they sat. Part of her loved that he could maintain such optimism. She wished she shared it.

"Look at me," Beckett instructed with a downward cant of her head to indicate herself. "What kinda trouble would you expect a younger, dumber version of me to get herself into?" It wasn't fair to spin the conversation around on him like that. _Own your shit like a woman, Katie._

"Men," Castle answered readily. "Sex." No hesitance. No tone of judgment either. He was blessedly matter-of-fact. Her wide-eyed stare elicited a frown from the other as if the answer had been obvious. As if it would've been the most natural pitfall for anyone to tumble into. "What blunts our pain better than meaningless base pleasure? Don't forget: you're talking to a man who built something of an empire upon the back of depravity." He glanced away with a shake of his head. "That wasn't all about opportunistic press coverage and book sales."

"Still, it's a rather predictable story in my case, don't you think? No," Kate added swiftly with a wince. "Sorry. That's not me laying a trap for you. Forget the implied question mark. It's the truth. Even in my mind, the behavior is more than a little cliche."

Traffic crept onward, but they barely moved before having to wait again while the trickle of unmarked police vehicles ahead either deposited passengers at the street or nosed down into a parking area to do the same. It was swiftly becoming chaotic. The pier was a public ferry landing with bi-hourly service to Long Island City several times a day, hence the crowd of civilians complicating their effort. It could have been a worse throng. Showing up half-an-hour before the ferry's next departure had given them as clear a window to work with as could be expected in such a crowded city. The sight of fully outfitted ESU members moving with a purpose dispersed more gawkers than it invited.

"I didn't sleep with Dickson," Beckett clarified at length. "I think that's what pissed him off more than anything: the fact that he was one of the exceptions."

"Whoa."

Kate winced again sharply. "Shaddap," she grumbled. "There were _lots_ of exceptions, damn it. I just mean—" A passing chuckle from the passenger seat stopped her in the middle of explaining. Good. He knew better. That or he simply wanted to believe in better on her behalf. No doubt that generosity was a little more than she deserved this time around. The detective didn't have the heart or will to drag his mental image of her through the mud. "Uh, anyway, he tried and didn't take the rejection well. A weird version of a rivalry blew up into a bit of a thing and it got pretty ugly. Other people ended getting dragged into our drama. We're lucky neither of us ended up getting kicked out or stamped with something on our files that would've stuck to our careers. If all of the facts had come to light at the time, neither of us would've graduated."

"A career," her partner replied mildly to himself. "He certainly built one of those. Isn't he a little young for a Lieutenant?"

Grateful for the slight shift in topic, Beckett took a cleansing breath and nodded once. "He is, yeah, both in age and in terms of experience on the force. I won't say Ethan hasn't earned it. The guy's a prick, but he knows what he's doing most of the time. I will say that he's a better bureaucrat than a cop. That grief we gave him about the press earlier was no idle cheap-shot. He wags that tongue way too much. It's cost him cases in the past. Somehow that weasel managed to close a few high-profile ones. A bit of luck and having the right friends has kept him in or near the limelight, which is right where he wants to be to flex those political aspirations of his."

"It wouldn't surprise me if Gates had pulled similar strings," her partner issued while the line moved forward again by a few car-lengths. The dock was teeming now. Only a few officers wore their NYPD windbreakers or Hi-Vis yellow rain gear, but people were starting to leave regardless. Closer up at that point, they could see passing faces pinched and eyes that were widened in the broadcast of apprehension. ESU had that effect on folks. "She can say whatever she wants about looters and manpower deficiencies. The fact of the matter is: this case is going to get a staggering amount of print and air-time."

"What better way to confirm her appointment as Captain of the Twelfth than closing a case like this?" Kate nodded to herself. "Good for her if that's true."

"Yeah, well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Hey—over there. L.T. is trying to flag you down." A lift of his proud chin indicated the 5'7" officer standing slightly off to one side of the cars passing through ahead. He was rolling his wrist, guiding them closer with the whitish glare of a flashlight.

Beckett rolled down her window and stopped alongside. "Hey there, hunk. You headed our way?"

L.T. snorted audibly, unimpressed. Castle exhaled a clipped note of mirth in appreciation. _Victory._ "Beckett. Hey, Castle. Go ahead and unload here. I'm taking this unit straight back to the House. It's already too crowded here. People are bugging us with dumb questions."

"Great," the woman emitted dryly while rising from her sedan. The unfamiliar burden of the tactical gear made her movements sluggish and a little clumsy. It wasn't doing any favors for her battered body. A glance across the roof revealed her partner experiencing similar awkwardness. "You'll adjust to it soon enough."

"You've got some time for that," L.T. informed them before slipping into the driver's seat. "Maybe another thirty before the next train of personnel rolls in. Damn," he added in complaint while adjusting the seat forward. _Shorty-pants._ Kate elected not to tug on that particular string of banter. The door thudded closed. He frowned up at her and Castle when the author stepped into view at her left. A couple silent ticks came and went. "You two keep your heads down out there."

"You said 'head'."

The officer snarled wordlessly in feigned disgust and pulled away.

"You are on fire today," Castle observed amusedly. Broad shoulders quivered while watching the sedan make its way haltingly towards the main street again.

"And you thought _I_ was the bad influence," Beckett returned with a tug that straightened the set of his tac-vest across the waist. She patted his chest and walked off with an extra bit of _oomph_ thrust into the natural rocking of her hips. Esposito and Ryan were visible talking together near a couple taller piles, painted white like the rest, which arose to one side at the mouth of the pier. Neither seemed to have spotted them yet. "Hey." That did the job. "What'd you two do, fly here?"

"We were in the lead car," Espos said.

"Since we _had_ to be," Ryan added with a stare at Castle.

Her partner made a flawless show of innocence. "Huh? Who said you had to be?"

Beckett cut in before that spark could ignite a fresh round of wailing. "So! Rendell gave the go-ahead for you two, huh?"

"Personally," Espo confirmed while crossing of his arms at his sternum. "He seemed surprised that you were only asking for the two of us."

"Who else would _want_ in on this?" Ryan asked with a discomfited noise. "The speil he gave us about what he'd do if we spoke to the press, even by accident? I think it took years off my life."

"Point is," the Latin detective intruded again with his gaze still on their leader, "I think he expected you to put together more of an actual task force."

Beckett arched an eyebrow. "Me and my shiny gold badge?"

"Rank didn't stop you from handing out pointers to everyone else getting their shit together."

She winced and shifted her stance with some discomfort. The woman was keenly aware of her partner's focus at her left. He wasn't peripherally visible. She could feel it nonetheless. "He mentioned that? Jeez. Who's blabbing? I offered a few suggestions is all. Most of it was me nodding. Though I do nod my head like a boss," she touted with a shift of her focus to Castle in a smartass show of seeking confirmation. He was already nodding in agreement with amusing readiness. Always available to be her back-up.

Neither of the men before them so much as cracked a smile. _Hmph._ _Waste of our comedic genius._

"It's Gates' moment in the sun," Beckett stated dryly, "not mine. Speaking of which, this is a good chance for the rest of us to get a sense of how she's going to steer this ship and adjust to her particular style. I hope you'll both spare some attention for that, huh? I'm still playing catch-up over here."

"Yeah, yeah," Esposito drawled. "You can copy our homework, slacker."

A ripple of amusement toured their small group.

Then Ryan, half-turned to view their crowded surrounds, asked, "Where do you want us to start? You want the focus on Finch, right?"

"Right," Beckett confirmed evenly. Her voice lowered some unconsciously as if diverting attention from the island itself would somehow invite a sudden spotlight of disapproval or incredulity from cunningly hidden superiors within the crowd. "He took a boat to NoBro, but it hasn't turned up yet. Give that they found his camera on his person during the body recovery, I don't hold out much hope that he left anything particularly important on the vessel itself. Still, it'd be worth a look. I'm more interested in getting a description of it so we can talk to the guys on Riker's Island and see if they noticed it coming or going. We also need to have it dusted by CSU. If someone else moved the boat to strand Finch on that island or took it themselves to escape the crime scene, they might've left prints."

"Good thinking," Castle murmured, maybe unwittingly. His head was bowed in contemplations of his own design.

"Uh, it's a long shot. Water is hell on evidence. You can get his address from Dickson," she informed the boys. "Castle said he's local, so it won't be a long trip."

"Manhattan even," the writer interjected. "Beyond that, I don't know."

"If there's time after locating the boat, or if you can't find it in the first place, head back to Finch's and start building us an image of his life to work from. After Castle and I get back from the island and debrief we'll jump in with you and split the tasks from there."

The pair of detectives before her, both looking notably more chafed by the bitter wind blustering in off the river by then, consented with respective, succinct replies. "You two try to stay dry out there," Esposito added before they walked away. The comment didn't strike her as being dirty until she saw them fist-bump right before vanishing among the throng. _Grrr._

She imposed the rule right then and there. _I will not fuck my boyfriend for the first time on Corpse Island. I will not fu—_

"Why hey there you two," a familiar drawl emitted.

Beckett whirled and found Logan Devereux standing before her and Rick. _Jeez_. The swagger on this guy. Even the way he stood irritated her a little: hands casually perched at his waist, thumbs tucked. The slightly displaced fabric offered fleeting and meager glimpses of the man's oblique muscles where they slanted inward along that classically masculine V-shape. There was an oddly playful cant in the weight distribution at his hips. _Fuck your hips, cowboy. I mean, wait. No. The opposite of that._ The southern man's good ol' boy charm danced in gas-flame eyes and stretched wide at his lips with a brilliance and perfection that must haunt the nightmares of orthodontists everywhere.

That, in turn, pulled across her patience like a bow being drawn across the strings of a violin. Except the note produced was more of a shriek.

Castle, looking for all the world like he was trying not to laugh, slipped between her and the mercenary with a voice strained by humor, but nonetheless welcoming. "Hey, man, let's go acquire some coffee for the road. Uh, river. We'll be disgustingly ingratiating. Plus, I'll probably never get a chance to wear this outfit again," he added while pair strutted off together, "I wanna see what kind of discount it nets me."

First he threw himself on a grenade for her by taking the chair next to Ethan and now this?

That beautiful man was getting laid tonight. Come hell or high water.

"Beckett."

She turned again at a more relaxed rotation. The sound and sight of the Connelly brothers didn't command the same upheaval. On the contrary, they presented a magnificently effective wall blocking the wind from buffeting her where she stood. "Hey. I was just about to go looking for you two."

"Did you see the updated roster?"

"Yeah, ten of you guys, huh? That's better than the six we thought we'd be going with."

Ulan nodded agreement. His brother gave a guttural hum of concession and added, "Still not ideal, but I'll take it."

Kate shook her head, bemused. "You really think someone or some group is lurking out there?"

Eamon shrugged those burly shoulders and rubbed at a smooth-shaven jaw. "We think the body count suggests someone made a bloody little home for themselves. They made themselves comfortable. They redecorated." Kate shivered briefly and didn't count it a result of the cold. "We don't operate the way you and yours do anyway though. Do this gig long enough and you realize that it often comes down to the math. Skill matters. Steadiness under fire matters. Yet we lean heavily on basic geometry to define our grids and sweeping patterns. For example, it'd be easier for you to cover a ninety-percent cone stretching outward in front of you rather than the full one-eighty frontal, right? Right. So you bring another body along and split that demand in half, and so on and so forth. You carve up the pie until there are no blind spots. Ideally, you have enough to provide some overlap. We look for those utilizations of perspective within the dimensions of every area of engagement. The bigger that area is, the more people you ideally want to make the numbers add up. That's how you optimize everyone's safety—not just ESU's, but whoever we're stacked up against too."

Kate stared blankly. She looked from one to the other and said, "I rocked English in school."

Neither man laughed. They didn't even smirk. She grinned anyway and turned to her right some to hide it. _Damn. My writer has spoiled me._ "Uh. Anyway, we don't know what's waiting for us out there yet. I'm hoping all of you guys are going to end up being a woeful stroke of overkill."

"Likewise," Eamon agreed aloud as both of them nodded.

"Well, I expect you recall why I was coming to find you two. You mentioned something about seeing Logan's skill for myself?"

Eamon's jaw shifted side-to-side before he nodded again. She watched as he unzipped one of the pockets of his vest and withdrew a cell phone from its water-resistant confines. "We had the same concerns as you initially," he rumbled while poking in a password, "so we emailed a couple friends who in turn put some feelers out for us." He shifted to stand at her right instead while still working at the cell. She grimaced some as the wind pressed into the opened gap to get at her. "I didn't get much back. He's a ghost. That's no easy feat in these modern times, which probably says plenty all on its own about him. Ah, here we go."

She leaned right to look at the phone from over the other's left arm. It was a media program and a video was cued up with the screen currently black.

"What you're about to see is a video that was taken during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. It was shot at a private party hosted at some military bigwig's mansion on the city's outskirts. He'd set up a firing range in his backyard for personal use but, since they were around, he invited some of the competitors from the sport shooting portion of the Games to enjoy his hospitality."

"Oh? What a swell guy."

Eamon grunted and pressed play. It was either early morning or late afternoon. The lighting was poor and the grainy quality of the camera itself didn't help. She couldn't tell if it was from a cell phone or an actual video camera. The motion swayed as if the operator had tied one on before they started filming.

"Ugh. Me without my Dramamine."

"Better get on that," Eamon replied, "if we're gonna be sharing a boat."

A somewhat smoother panning motion revealed the exterior of a cream-toned and dark hardwood home with several lights aglow around a sumptuous deck and pool area. Music was playing, too tinny to identify. A couple dozen people were scattered about. Myriad ethnicities in varied attire. There were a couple time-jumps throughout it all from cessations of filming. Soon enough the display rotated to reveal the aforementioned target range. It stood a good ways back from the deck area itself, which made it difficult to make out details. The guy doing the camera work began talking. She picked out a few familiar words that placed the language as being Dutch.

"The quality sucks, I know. This was ripped from a youtube video a few days after it was recorded. I'm told it was grabbed about five hours after the video had been posted and that within another three hours the original was taken down from the site. No reposts or replications can be found now. It's gone except for the copies that were passed along and to a handful of hardcore competition enthusiasts who collect things like this. I don't know who posted it on youtube in the first place, but their aptly applied title for it was: The scariest real thing I've ever seen."

Beckett arched her eyebrows at that but made no comment.

"I also don't know what this cameraman is going on about. There isn't a lick of English on this track, not even from Logan, who features in it briefly. I'll skip ahead to that part in a moment, but first, let me show you one of these guys in action. Here," he added after moving ahead to about the ten-minute mark. Distinctive pops resounded while a slender Chinese man around her height stood shooting in the foreground of a wide-angle shot that included the target range in the distance. The targets being fired upon arose from a steel bar about twenty feet in length and maybe four or five in height. Every two feet along the bar arose a head-and-shoulders target silhouette wrought in some kind of metal, maybe tin. Very similar yellow-and-black paper versions were laid over them in turn. The guy shooting was good. Really good, actually. He fired two full clips before ejecting the second magazine and making the weapon safe. He joked with others off-camera while tending to the task.

"Damn," she remarked. "You can barely make the targets out. This would test me even if I were stone-cold sober."

"Me too, yeah. It did this guy as well. You can't really tell, but he missed four of his twenty shots. That's still great shooting, especially at that firing rate. Most of the others do notably worse. This guy's name is Tan Zonglang. At the time this video was taken he was widely recognized as the best shot in the world with a Glock. He placed silver in the fifty-meter shoot at the Olympics that year. He might've taken the gold if not for a weak trigger pull on his last shot. Anyway, fifty meters is just about right in terms of the distance to this target range. They didn't play by competition rules, though, because they were just drunk and goofing around."

"Rules-shmules," Beckett inserted with a feigned inebriated lisp and sway of her upper body.

Still no smiles. _Sheesh. Tough pier_. _I really have been spoiled. Where's my writer?_

"So, their rules, from what I'm told, allotted two standard ten-round clips with a ten-second shot window. You start safe, load-up, fire two full mags within the allotted gap, and then return to safe to stop the clock. Not a terribly abstract variation in comparison to the genuine article at the Games."

"I'll have to take your word for that. Ten seconds at fifty-yards though—wow."

Eamon nodded once at her right. "Only a handful of them manage to get off every shot. They added in penalty time for misses, so it was better to make every shot count than to fire off every available round. As you saw, Tan managed that feat, but not without penalties."

"Lemme guess," she deposited somewhat dryly, "Logan fires off a perfect score?"

Eamon eyed her askance with a level glance that made her decide to, ah, not be flippant anymore. She cleared her throat softly while the larger answered, "No, actually, he missed four times as well."

Beckett frowned, bemused. "He didn't win? Well, wait, jeez. Tying with a silver medalist is very impressive, clearly. That's more than good enough for me in terms of proving his skill set. Thanks for, uh, showing..." She trailed off at the end, stalled out by the unblinking gazes of her twin companions. "What?"

Eamon shook his head and brought the phone closer to his chest. After a bit of fiddling, he canted his head. She obliged the unspoken lure with a returning lean towards the show. On the screen, Logan was visible dressed in jeans and a green t-shirt. He was wearing a dual-holster shoulder rig.

 _Two guns? Jeez. You really are a fucking cowboy, aren't you?_ She was far from impressed.

His hair was so blonde it shone almost white in the video. That backward-worn ballcap had allowed that detail to go mostly overlooked previously. Another man was present in the video, heavier set and shorter, Chinese as far as she could discern, wearing a nice pair of grey slacks and a white dress shirt. The two were arguing.

"If you watch the whole thing," Eamon observed, "it might make for an interesting lesson in the dynamics of etiquette between different cultures. The bigwig who threw this party was the same guy that Logan was working for at the time. He asked our resident mercenary there to join the competition on the lawn. Well, Logan refused. I don't know the language, so I can't say first-hand why. The guy who sent this to me said that a translator he knows determined Logan responded that he was hired to train Chinese police officers, not get wasted and entertain the man's guests. The others on the tape try wheedling him into participating, as you can see there, but apparently, our snowy-haired young man isn't one for casual showboating."

Beckett frowned. Deeply. That kind of modesty didn't align with any image she had conjured up on the man's behalf. Watching him on the video, politely restrained but adamant and gradually becoming annoyed, was somewhat jarring. The professionalism and restraint were equally unexpected.

She looked up when Eamon paused to skip ahead again by a couple minutes. While it was still paused, the ESU member turned somewhat with a squinting glance over the crowd and then refocused on her. "This next part is what I wanted you to see. By this point, the argument you glimpsed has gotten well out of hand. The Chinese guy, being drunk and maybe a little entitled in his own right, really loses his cool. I don't have a translation for what they're saying at this point. You don't really need one."

That was true enough. Upon the play resuming she could see that the party had dissolved into a widespread staring bout from the guests while the Chinese military officer or politician—whatever role he bore—fired off a stream of agitated abuse at his American employee. Within that shouted stream of verbosity, there was a moment. It was definitive and clear. She wanted to know what the bigwig had said after seeing it because Logan's eyes widened. Then they immediately narrowed into blades of enmity.

He turned without a word to advance, pushing between a pair of other guests who immediately scattered back and away along with several others. Grass rasped beneath each angry stride to the edge of the deck. Then he pulled one of the weapons from its holster, assumed a 'fighting' shooter's stance, and began blasting away. The draw itself was...frightening. _Fast._ Liquid. The gaps between the shots were chillingly narrow. She could hear the metallic backing of the targets pinging with every scored hit as the shooter swept across the line-up. It sounded like someone was battering out an enthused solo on a steel drum. It was as if time has gone slippery and couldn't maintain a decent grip on the infinitesimal scraps between each cracking report of the weapon. While she was watching it happen, half mesmerized, the mercenary started walking towards the targets and drawing the second sidearm. Doing so while still shooting and hitting his targets with the other hand. For several mind-blowing shots, the weapons bucked and roared with flaming gouts bursting from the muzzles in almost perfect tandem while directed at differing silhouettes. He finished the last half of the second pistol's magazine with such rapid trigger-pulls she couldn't manage a count. Then he slammed the weapons back into their respective holsters, snatched a coat angrily from the back of a lawn chair, and walked off screen. The whole thing was over in—what? _Jesus._ Twenty-seven seconds, with the dominant portion of that involving coming and going from the targets.

The silence in his wake among the other guests, including Tan, was goddamn bottomless. They just stared at the line of target silhouettes as if frozen in mimicked postures.

Beckett wasn't aware of holding her breath until a delayed gasp for air finally rattled her free of a fleeting paralysis and sent it gusting down into her lungs. "Shit," she expelled breathily as it fled. Then another, softer, "Holy shit."

"Yeah," Emaon rumbled. "My sentiments exactly." He slid the cell phone into his vest pocket.

It wasn't so easy to put away the images burned into her brain.

* * *

A/N: Generally speaking, dual-wielding firearms is complete and utter nonsense. What I described Logan doing in the video, however, is _not_ fiction. The date, setting, and circumstances all are, but not the act itself. If you swap out the party crowd for merely myself and two others, I suppose the reaction of being frozen stiff isn't fiction either. There are people in this world who seem specifically born to do certain things. Mozart with his music. Michelangelo with his art. It is deeply chilling to witness first-hand the full, terrible aptitude of someone who seems born to handle firearms. I don't mean to be prosaic, but at the time, it was enough to make me question their invention.

I haven't had time to catch up with many of you individually lately, but I hope you know that it's always fun hearing from you. Thank you for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **12:22 PM, East River**

"Is this thing going to do the job?" Beckett asked while leading the way inside. A soft note of relief escaped upon being suffused by the heated interior. "You'd seemed iffy about this part of the meeting earlier."

Castle closed the door of the wheelhouse behind them, exhaled a few warm breaths across his fingers, and nodded once while rubbing them together. "Oh yes, this will do nicely." She arched an eyebrow when he reached for her, expecting mischief, but slowly smiled while he splayed both of his hands around hers, one and then the other, to ease her chill in turn. He looked around the confines of the smallish white room while doing so. A door and sound-dampening glass wall separated them from the attached command cabin where the rest of the team was gathered. Altogether, the windows throughout both rooms provided 360-degrees of visibility for the seventy-foot vessel. "I was expecting to be squeezed onto one of the smaller, Fast-pursuit crafts, not the queen of the Harbor Patrol Unit fleet."

"She's a beauty," confirmed the HPU Sergeant standing at the wheel. He was around Beckett's height, swarthy and grizzled with a trimmed, thick brown beard. "As far as official work for the unit goes, this is her maiden voyage."

Castle introduced both of them to the middle-aged guy, Wes Hammond, with all of them nodding in favor of handshakes. Then observed to Beckett, "It's the newest ship in their yard, custom-built for handling various terrorist scenarios. With something like this, we can ease in upstream of NoBro, tune our speed to the current, and effectively hover there all day long if we wanted to. The twin V-12 engines can dump forty-five knots into our wake on an open stretch. For comparative purposes, the East River typically ranges between one and four. This also comes equipped with twin interceptor units that automatically adjust our trim and list—useful when you're dealing with the conflicting flows like the ones around the islands, especially given the chop this wind is stirring up."

The guy at the helm squinted aside at the author, "You a sailor, Mr. Castle?"

Her hand-toaster smiled. "I'm an admirer of cool toys."

Hammond chuckled some at that and nodded agreement.

It remained a little surreal to be in on the inside of her partner's secrets. She knew what a woeful understatement his neat deviation of a reply was in regards to his preferences for the water. _More like the absence thereof._ Moments like that made it hard to fathom there had been a time when she'd looked at him and likewise perceived only the cunningly adorned playboy.

"Uh, what about making landfall?" Beckett posed to derail an uncomfortable train of thought.

Richard relinquished her hands while turning and lifting his chin toward the stern. It was difficult to see through the crowd in the command cabin next door, but a tarp-covered, thirteen-foot inflatable boat was lashed to the rear deck, black, with a low profile. A knuckle-boom hydraulic crane was used to lower the tender off the port quarter. "That Zodiac is probably the best option for getting ashore. As long as we don't go crazy, it'll suffer the rocks without bursting the way a standard hull would."

"That's the new materials version," Wes inserted with a puff of seeming pride. "Armorflate, they call it. It's bullet-resistant."

"Oh? That's good news in terms of durability," Rick acknowledged, duly impressed. "Even so, an outboard motor isn't ideal."

"Nah. It doesn't need much depth to fly. Up until it starts getting rocky, the water around here is actually pretty deep. According to the charts, we'll be able to bring this beauty up to within twenty feet if we can maintain the right alignment. That's hardly any gap at all. All you need is enough momentum to be able to stand and not get knocked over by the current. That's plenty of wiggle room, even in this shit." The last was accompanied by a nod to the forward-slanted windows before him. Beyond the glass, the bow was pitching in a shallow rhythm. The river farther ahead of them, however, was rife with rougher-looking whitecaps.

Castle hadn't seemed to hear at first, but then nodded a few seconds later and faced his partner. "In any case, it's what we have available. We'll have to make it work."

"It looks a bit small," Beckett noted dubiously of the craft. "We have a lotta people and gear."

"We might need to make two trips. At least they'll be relatively quick ones. The zodiac is a famously impressive little vessel on its own merit, you know. Militaries all over the world favor them, hence it's proper designation: combat rubber raiding and/or reconnaissance craft. CRRC."

"Oh yeah? With initials like that, I bet they're popular for making stealth insertions."

"Actually, they're used more for the element of surprise than—" He stopped, turned slowly away from the window, and crossed his arms with a hard glare at her. Beckett raised her eyebrows in a display of innocence, but he didn't buy it. " _Anyway_ ," the other continued with a lean of disapproval on the word, which she didn't believe for a moment either, "this should do the job just fine."

"You two might wanna head back into the command cabin with the others and grab a proper seat," the pilot spoke up. "We're gonna be passing Lawrence point in a moment. Even in this beauty, it won't be a smooth transition. Or did you need something else when you came in?"

"No, no," Rick assured while visibly bracing himself physically to exit into the cold again, "I was just taking advantage of an opportunity to explore. Thank you for indulging us, Wes."

"There're handrails," Beckett pointed out. "We'll be fine in here."

Officer Hammond looked askance at her and seemed about to object.

Rick beat him to the punch with a smirk aimed her way and a humored, "At least I _thought_ we were exploring. Maybe we're hiding from a couple of our teammates."

 _Nabbed, curses._

"Look for yourself. They're still double-checking our gear," Beckett stated with her most casual shrug. "It's not a big space. We'd probably just get in the way right now. Give 'em ten more minutes."

"Not to be a jerk," Wes commented, "but you're kind of in _my_ way being in here. Going through this area isn't easy on a good day, and this mess is making me wish for a mere bad one."

Kate arched an eyebrow and returned, "We do this neat trick sometimes where we contain ourselves and don't talk. I think you'll be okay."

Castle, looking uncomfortably between the two of them, said, "Beckett, it's fi—"

But Wes overrode him that time. "While you're on this boat, you're under Harbor Patrol jurisdiction, detective. Don't make me pull rank like an asshole."

 _Partially too late_ , she thought sourly.

With a shake of her head, the woman turned to Castle and nodded with a wave of both hands to shoo him on out ahead of her. The steady rumbling of the boat engines came back to clearer audibleness as they exited. Eruptions of diminutive speckles greeted the bow with every downward cut into the brackish tidal strait. It didn't seem to matter where one stood; the sloppy kiss of the river was omnipresent. High above, the clouds had begun to yield their own contribution to the miserable day. The raindrops were sporadic for the moment, but the sky looked fit to burst.

"He does have a boatful of other people whose safety is his concern," Castle pointed out, raising his voice some to be heard above the din.

"Huh?"

"Wes."

Kate glanced back through the rounded window of the doorway. The HPU Sergeant was watching them, frowning. She waved with a pointedly false abundance of cheer before turning back to Castle with her lips quickly lowering back into a snarl. "Jackass."

Coldness bit in deep when she grabbed onto the safety railing fixed at about head-level which ran along the exterior wall of the central structure. She followed in the author's wake as they shuffled toward the stern. The walkway of the deck was plenty wide, but it was slick with wetness. Lanie, outfitted in borrowed ESU gear the same as the rest, spotted the two of them through the windows they were moving past and burst into a brief fit of giggles that weren't audible. _Shush, you!_

A grumble emerged amidst a fresh sheet of pellets striking them. She couldn't have said whether it was rainfall or river water at that point. "Are you telling me that these guys aren't accustomed to operating under stressful conditions? That's a pretty big chunk of their intended purpose for crying out loud. If all it takes is having a couple people in the same room to make that guy lose focus, I shudder for whoever actually depends on his skills when the time comes."

Castle laughed aloud ahead of her, resonant and rich, which made her halt in confused annoyance. The complaint wasn't intended to be funny. Nonetheless, he grinned back at her with those blue eyes crinkled at their corners. "Is this how you always get when you're aroused and not properly sated afterward?"

"Better make a note of it for future reference just in case," she fired back waspishly. In the privacy of her mind, however, the timing of her mood swing did bear a rather striking alignment to his theory. _That could potentially explain a lot. Maybe too much._

"What have we here?" she heard the man ahead say moments later. Before she could protest, he pulled ajar a doorway they had bypassed on their way to the wheelhouse and ducked inside.

A narrow staircase with a pair of glowing lights overhead led them down into a lower deck. Being in a relatively quiet space put a rather pointed tip on the quality of their gear. The clothing barely whispered from brushes of friction during their movements. They moved like phantoms.

"Whoa." Rick stopped in the open archway of a doorway to the right. "That's trouble."

Frowning, but curious, Kate leaned around the obstacle of his bulk and beheld the first-aid cabin with two cots to either side. An accordion doorway stood open across the way leading into a bathroom with a decontaminant shower stall. A smile gushed to life. "Ah," she commented with a nod to the narrow beds, "it's where the real saving is done. Are we gonna pretend you knew all that stuff about the engines, but not what was waiting for us in here?"

"Hey, now. I didn't." Rick shook his head slightly, grimaced. "And I genuinely think we'd hurt ourselves if we tried anything in such cramped quarters."

"Sissy."

He looked aside at her. _Really_ looked with his lips poised slightly apart and his eyes dipping towards her mouth, neck, and the zipper of her tac-vest. The muscles of his throat rippled with a compulsory swallow. It was hardly the first time she'd witnessed those pupils blown with arousal amidst their perusal of her.

Knowing they were both ready, willing, and able to indulge made a hefty difference.

Kate jerked a step away from him as if zapped by a shock, out of the doorway and into the silhouette of the one behind her. "Don't even think about it!" Surprise was secondary to a rampant buzz that jetted outward from a tightness in her chest to tingle at her extremities.

Rick exhaled a clipped laugh, but the deep gust of his exhale made it painfully apparent that the joke was on him as much as her. He smooshed a hand down over his face in an attempt at reclaiming composure. A film still seemed to coat his muted December skies when they arose over her head to study what lay behind her. "Oh, a galley. Think they have any decent snacks?"

"Get back up there," she ordered with a swift jerk of her chin toward the stairs.

"Aw, come on. I'll behave, I promise."

"I wouldn't buy a claim like that with someone else's money. Even if I would, it's not just your self-control I'm worried about," she admitted with a discomfited shift of her stance. "Now scoot. There's nothing else to see anyway. Galley, bunks, bathroom."

"On a boat, they call that last one—

"Castle," she snarled.

A roguish smirk crept into place across the curves of his lips. He turned without capitalizing upon the admittedly rich potential for teasing regarding a subject _she_ was guilty of bringing up in the first place. _Phew. And I'm glad you're the bigger man. Heh, big, 'cause he's—no, Katie!_ She waited, massaging her temples, while her companion tromped up the narrow stairs with his head unconsciously ducked from the low ceiling and followed closely in his wake. It took willpower to resist the urge to goose that trimmed fanny.

"I don't think you're giving us enough credit," he commented above. "Do you really think our first time would be something as tawdry as me bending you over the galley table?"

"L-less talking, more walking."

"Would you?" he asked with a scandalized gasp. "I—I don't think my tactical vest is long enough for this conversation."

"Go, Rick!"

Another belly-deep laugh escaped him. In that cramped space, the sound was almost as tangible as it was audible, a lick of sensation against the surface of her skin and a sympathetic vibration within her bones. He opened the door to the topdeck ahead while half-turning to say something to her. She could make out the edge of his mouth tightened by some impish design.

Lieutenant Kirkland was neatly filling the pathway ahead with one hand poised to reach for the handle that had unexpectedly swung away. He blinked at them and grunted aloud, "Oh. There you are. Good. We're almost there. I want to use these last few minutes to talk to everyone together."

 _Saved by the frigging bell._

* * *

 **12:45 PM**

"Are you gonna tattle on me?" Kate asked in an attempt at light humor.

Lanie made a wordless noise of contempt and shook her head, but it didn't quite wipe away the concern from her features. "Who would I tell?" She watched the detective's arms lower to her sides again. "The only people who could stop you are the ones who sent you here. Just...for heaven's sake, don't fall overboard, okay?"

"Aw," the other feigned in childlike protest.

The medical examiner ignored the insertion. She crossed her arms and eyed the other sternly. "According to the HPU officers onboard, the water temperature is around forty-five degrees today. That gives an adult with full use of their faculties between fifteen and thirty minutes before they start succumbing to the effects of hypothermia. Someone fit enough to fight the current long enough to reach Stony Point or Randall Field a little way downstream would barely be capable of dragging themselves off the rocks and onto dry land afterward. Unless help was waiting or already en route, they'd probably die of exposure right there on the shore." Her voice lowered more as a pair of ESU members passed them by on the gently pitching deck. "Honey, you'll regain a full range of motion in time, but—lordy, I'm sorry to be blunt like this—you'll probably never be one-hundred percent again with overhead extensions. Right now it's still in pretty rough shape. That would make swimming more than somewhat problematic in the best of conditions, which these most definitely aren't."

Beckett shifted her stance, discomfited, but unyielding. "I've already been made aware of what to expect in the future, Lanie. _And_ I've been given an earful about the wisdom of making the trip this morning," she added with a darting glance at Rick's back where he stood at the railing beyond. "Kirkland knows what's up, okay? It's a necessary risk." A rotation of one arm at the shoulder was followed by the flex of the attached bicep. "Don't underestimate my doggy-paddling. These cannons are loaded."

The dark-skinned woman's eyes rolled within their sockets. She sighed expansively.

"You're up, Doc," the ESU Lieutenant called. He was holding the battery pack and wiring for the camera and microphone that each of the others had already been fitted with.

The M.E. had delayed both their outfittings to discuss the investigator's physical state in relative privacy. She stepped away presently with a backward glance at her besty. "You heard me, girl." Beckett raised her palms some in a show of surrender and watched as the other woman relented to the attention of Kirkland and one of his fellows. Lanie's eyebrows shot up when one of them tucked a battery pack the size of a deck of playing cards into one of the right breast pockets of her vest. "Whoa there, buddy. How 'bout you buy me dinner first?"

A peripheral glimpse of motion drew Kate's gaze to the railing instead. She strode that way and lurked a couple steps behind the author and the mercenary now standing at his right. North Brother island awaited their arrival a few hundred yards past the starboard bow. It hunkered low like something seeking to escape notice from the surrounding city. The smaller, similarly vegetation-choked South Brother was already passed by in the nearer distance. A little over a quarter-mile stretched out between the sibling isles. Bouys markers warned of rocks and depths that diminished to less than ten feet in several areas.

"Whadda ya see?" she heard Logan ask.

Rick started and glanced swiftly at the other man. "Wha—uh, excuse me?"

Logan looked at him and then back to the island ahead. "The other guys say yah some kinda profil'ah? Whadda ya see when ya look at this place through a lens like that?"

A rumble of comprehension was emitted before the reply. "I'm not a profiler. That's a term you'd use for people who have dedicated themselves to the task by formal education and practical training. I'm a student of human nature, that's all. Always the student," he added, more to himself it seemed.

"Yeah? Sounds a lil' more complicated than that." Castle shifted the set of his crossed arms and didn't answer. "Pretend ah'm askin' for fun then, just 'tween us."

Rick considered the man and at length faced their destination. He was silent for long enough that Beckett started to claim those last few steps to stand at his left. The shift of momentum was halted by the renewed flow of his voice. "When I was seventeen, I spent part of a summer working in a small town at the base of the Catskills upstate. An old subcontractor, the grandfather of a friend of mine, was disassembling a greenhouse; basically stripping off the roofing, wire tubing, and light fixtures—stuff like that. The glass walls were already gone, so, there was only the skeletal steel frame left in our wake."

"Ya said before that you were born n' raised 'ere in the city. That's a fair stride from home."

"That was the idea at the time," the novelist said by way of confirmation. "Anyway, we were rushing throughout that last day on the job. A storm was moving in. We could see it coming down over the mountains, massive, shining with afternoon brightness at its crown and edges which swirled darker towards its grey-black core. It seemed to hang so low in the sky that the clouds were being gouged by the taller peaks as they passed. The rain was only spitting drops here and there by the time the old man and I conceded and packed up our gear. We were a couple hundred feet away when lightning struck the peak of the greenhouse frame."

"Whoa."

Beckett completed the advance she'd halted previously. Rick was more focused on the view before them all, brow furrowed. "Before the bolt struck, there was a small gap of curious stillness. I remember the way time seemed to slow down. The hairs on my arms and head lifted from the static charge in the air. Three decades have probably altered that recollection some, but it's still intense in my mind. The prelude to the strike, I mean—an agonizing sense of...terrible potential hovering on the cusp of realization."

Logan leaned out a bit more and noticed her presence. He didn't smile. "That's the feelin' yah get now? Great," he concluded dryly.

"I don't care for the ocean. That's probably more to blame than NoBro."

The other man hummed in wordless understanding, but Kate frowned a touch to hear the author speak straightforwardly about his phobia with a stranger. The very way he had chosen not to with another unknown figure only a short time ago. It had taken her over a year to make those same inroads. Others had done likewise for longer still and hadn't gleaned access for their trouble. _Where'd you get your golden ticket, cowboy?_

Her gaze tracked to the silhouette of trees becoming clearer as they encroached and her frown deepened. She could just make out partial glimpses of a few manmade structures. The ruined base of a long-gone lighthouse and a crumbled outbuilding nearby. Further inland towards the southwest side jutted part of the building and gently pitched roof belonging to the Teeth of Seven Sorrows itself. "It's an abandoned place," she commented. "You said so yourself. We're gonna check it out and start the long process of picking up the pieces. If we're lucky we'll also grab whoever necessitated doing so. There's nothing unfamiliar about that. Not for us." Castle showed no change of expression despite the reassurance, which didn't feel like much of one after the words were flown from her.

"If half of my concern is due to the water," he conceded at length, "the other irrational half must stem from the fact that NoBro's legacy in the context of human habitation has been the same in every lasting circumstance. Whenever people are brought to its shore, death or madness has been the inevitable result. It's strange to think about, that's all. In a way, that was part of its appeal for me on previous visits." His lips curved slightly, mirthlessly. "Circumstance authors such stark contrasts."

Kirkland called her name before Beckett could reply. Just as well. No easy reassurances came to mind as she left the pair at the railing.


	11. Chapter 11

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **1:03 PM, North Brother Island**

Every previous quality attributed to NoBro changed subtly once they were standing on it with the patrol boat cruising at low speed a hundred yards out in the middle of the East River, beyond quick and easy return. Most notable of those alterations was how, minus the somewhat loftier perch from the boat's main deck, the hunkering effect Beckett had previously attributed to the place was gone. On level ground, it loomed. It wasn't hiding at all.

Half a century of unchecked rampancy had produced formidably dense walls of verdure. The raw beauty of it all was undeniable. Deciduous varieties ruled almost exclusively, mostly maples which towered in a few variations of the parent species. Those were intermittently mixed with a number of stoic white oaks, a stand of slender birches on the north face of the island, and others elsewhere that Beckett couldn't readily identify. The mildness of the season had seen fit to grace most specimens with nearly the entire fullness of their respective autumnal mantles—yellows, reds, and orangish blends of the two.

Kudzu and other killing vines strung many of the trees like so many leafy green constrictors. The undergrowth around and between it all was thick and hearty bush. Some were squat and unassuming while others sprawled upon snakier stems that bristled with serrated thorns like viper fangs. Ferns managed to eke out more graceful presences here and there.

For all the blush of life available and the way the tumultuous sky lent that flora greater vibrancy by its bruised contrast, the place also pervaded with its own special brand of brooding dimness. Diffused radiance shone through the cloud cover. It bent faint shadows from all the living things. So too did it creep outward from the imposing edifices of dead or dying buildings. The sight called to mind Kate's grandmother telling her about the exodus her family had made from Belgrade to ill-fated Kragujevac during World War II. Some of the abandoned houses they came across during that fifty-mile trek had been razed to the ground with fire by their former inhabitants. _It does no good, Pile, to leave a place bereft of its purpose. Better to start clean than to forget and become lost, for it will never again be the same place._ Within the almost funereal silence on NoBro, a writhing demise of purposefulness had certainly been wrought. Barely discernible swaths of darkness stretched from each structure's desiccated moorings as if their existences had already been distilled more into those cancerous shades extending blindly outward in the desperate seeking of something hopelessly beyond their grasps.

Kate swallowed thickly and shifted the suddenly confining weight of her backpack. _PTSD...not now, please. Please._ She ushered deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Her left hand curled and loosened in measured, repetitive clenches at her side. Her joints began to ache in protest.

"It's so quiet," Lanie emitted from close behind her, hardly above a whisper, but it made the investigator jerk in surprise where she stood. The predictable gap of conversation among the other people present after hearing such an observation being made only drove the observation home more firmly. It felt like the twenty-acre landmass itself was holding its breath alongside its fresh interlopers, but for darkly different reasons.

Rick's voice arose more deeply at a similar volume, which was like a soothing balm upon the detective's hot and ragged nerves. "If it were business as usual for the city, you'd be hearing the almost incessant roar of planes coming and going from LaGuardia." Harbinger had grounded all flights for at least the next couple of days. "This is the island's normal voice—the flow of water at its edges and this steady psithurism. The birds that North and South Brother play host to during the spring and summer months aren't species which do much calling. Anything non-native that lived here when there were inhabitants like rats, frogs, or certain insects—they're all long gone. Not even the ants that were tracked in survived our absence."

"What a cheerful thought," Ethan Dickson grumbled. "Let's cut the chatter, huh?"

"It's good to know," opined the less familiar tenor of Joseph Hawkins. The somewhat nasal quality of his voice was threaded through with snippish disapproval. "A limited supply of scavengers will affect whatever timeline might be attributed to the victims later. Please don't interrupt our guide, Lieutenant. The history of this place may prove relevant in any number of useful ways. Understanding this environment is as much of a necessity to us as alibis and witness reports are to you."

A turn at Kate's waist to regard the pair presented the sight of Dickson's sneer towards the younger, skinnier, ebony-skinned CSU member. "Yeah, that's great, Urkle, but it won't do us much good if flapping our gobs gets us shot by some asshole hiding in the bushes."

Joseph adjusted the thickly glassed lenses upon his nose and said, "It's Hawkins. What's an Urkle?"

"Jesus Christ."

"Ah, now _that's_ a name we colored folk know and love," Lanie jabbed. "We also would've accepted our lesser lord and savior, Colonel Sanders."

"Lanie!" Castle gasped. "Don't speak that name on preservation ground."

"You guys," Beckett inserted mildly while facing forward, "dial it back a notch."

"Shh. Don't make Mom mad," Logan hissed at a stage-whisper. The others tried and failed to stifle their giggles.

She shot a scathing glare backward and in the process caught a fleet glimpse of Ethan and Joseph grinning helplessly at one another. _Oh, the strange bedfellows' apprehension makes of us._

Kate blamed this place. It was already bothering everyone, not just her. She expected more cutting remarks or gallows humor via resistance to that grim influence, but it didn't come. Perhaps because only moments later the sweeping spread of their ESU accompaniment returned in pairs into a closer cluster where the others stood at the shore near the old, upside down U-shaped support which marked the ferry landing. By expression and posture, none of the agents telegraphed having encountered anything of note in their explorations of the immediate area.

"Not shit to see," Kirkland unknowingly confirmed aloud. "Not even any tracks, which is..." He didn't finish, but instead glanced up at the stubbornly sporadic pattering of rain and adjusted the set of his helmet by its abbreviated brim. "This isn't gonna last. We're gonna get dumped on." His bearded guise lowered to its neutral plane and swept over the modest assembly. "We stick to the plan already discussed: make a counter-clockwise track down and around to the Teeth of Seven Sorrows using what's left of the old east and south roads."

That was the closest approximation they had of the route Finch might have taken during his visit. It went without saying that an absence of images from his camera didn't preclude the possibility of the urban explorer having diverted anywhere along that path towards whatever encounter brought about his untimely end. All they could do was make their best guess according to the pictures and the timeframe Harbinger was willing to allow.

"Mr. Castle," the Lieutenant went on, "I'll need you close to the front with me, please. The rest of you watch your footing and try to maintain the stagger and distances we set between each of you. We don't want you bunching together or thoughtlessly following along in the footsteps of the person ahead. I know you guys aren't used to hauling around gear like this. I'm sorry you've gotta shoulder the bulk of it, but I need my people as light on their feet as they can be. Speak up if you see something you want to investigate or if you need to take a break. I mean it now," he stressed. "It's better to stop for a few minutes here and there then it would be to exhaust yourselves and lose any alertness we might all benefit from later." The speaker paused until a series of nods were given in reply. "Good. One more thing: unless it's urgent, keep the op-freq clear for ESU while we're moving. In fact, it's fine to turn the receiver off for now and talk amongst yourselves as we go—your voices won't carry any farther than the clamor of your footsteps on this terrain. That can't be helped, so, walk normally. Don't waste the energy trying and failing to be stealthy. Just keep the chatter low and off the radio."

He paused again to assess the group. No one raised any questions.

"Alright then. My people—call it as you see and clear it. I'll divert you to tasks as Mr. Castle and myself identify them along the way. Conquer the gaps in your perimeter as that happens. Let's move."

Equal surges of dread and relief assailed Beckett as they began moving. She stepped into line after Rick and John, wanting to be close to her shadow's back. Logan, Lanie and then Joseph followed after her, respectively, with Ethan bringing up the rear. ESU was a bristling wall of armaments around them, three on each side and two at each end. Ulan and Eamon towered as the true guards on their six, both outfitted with carbines that dripped with menace in each Irishman's all-too-capable looking grips. Those arranged along the flanks bore MP5 submachine guns. One of the figures on each side bore ballistic combat shields on their backs while two others were strapped with combat shotguns. John and a smaller female officer—Bielsa, Kate's memory provided—also carried carbines at their fore.

Logan wore a dual nylon harness housing what she could now discern were matching, flat black Five-Seven USG pistols, a brand favored by members of the Secret Service. In his hands, the detective thought any gun might well qualify as a goddamn weapon of mass destruction, let alone one loaded with that ammo type and magazine capacity.

The other noticed her observation and cocked an eyebrow in wordless inquiry.

"Are you ambidextrous?"

The mercenary stared back at her for a few ticks. Those gas-flame blues seemed to harbor laughter somewhere behind them. Maybe it wasn't meant to be at her expense, but the detective didn't appreciate what was glimpsed either way. "Was that a question or a statement?"

 _Careful, Katie, jeez. He's no dummy._ She turned back around, irritated with herself for engaging in the first place.

The group paused as a whole while three members of their ESU team diverted together to circle around behind and clear the red-brick morgue and coalhouse which stood nearby. Watching them slip through the undergrowth broadcasting blatant threat and with little sound to mark their passage was a bit chilling. It made Beckett feel that much farther away from her murder board and espresso machine. The trio returned within two minutes. All appeared normal. Sure enough, the trek forward resumed.

The east road, as Kirkland had called it, was barely worthy of the term. Some patches of concrete were visible in pale grey swaths along the way, but most of it was buried under years of scattered soil that had since settled. Various plants had thrust their roots into the cracks time had yielded and made quick work of swallowing that stamp of civilization whole. The only other detail which lent the designation of their path some legitimacy was the fact that no trees had managed to carve out similar beds for their taproots. Their party moved beneath outstretched boughs along a ten-foot swath of clear forest floor, a leafy tunnel roofed, walled, floored with nature's fireworks display.

Luscious outdoorsy aromas made the city itself feel more distant than was literally the case.

"You don' like me much, do ya?"

Maybe it was the tone the mercenary used. A thrumming of becalmed, honest curiosity. It was echoed in his patrician features when she looked back again. He wasn't wrong, but her reasoning for harboring that dislike was admittedly weak. She went with the also truthful, "I don't like what you represent."

"As in how mah allegiance belongs to a corporation as opposed to a nation's flag?" She nodded stiffly. "Better write yah congressmen quick," Logan replied amusedly, "because yah country is swiftly growing dependent upon contract warfare. Ten more years an' y'all won't be able to fight a war abroad without it."

"This isn't war," she grit in reply. "Hence you not belonging within a mile of this operation."

The other shrugged, unfazed by her condemnation. "Ah'm here in mah capacity as a certified ballistics specialist, not as a hired gun. Ah came 'long in case any ah o' the poor folk waitin' for us died from GSWs. Just so happens that ah can do the job while also lookin' after mah'self. That had some appeal for yah bosses, mah dear. Gotta speak with them 'bout it."

 _My dear?! Oh, hell no you didn't._

"Don't call me that," the detective snarled, which evoked only a flashing, infuriatingly appealing grin from the man. It didn't even present as mockery. He just seemed...genuinely tickled by her. Damn it. She claimed a fortifying breath and lowered her tensed shoulders to their rightful slants. Getting upset would only provoke him to further mirth. "You, uh, went to school for that?"

"Yes, ma'am. Bedfordshire University, 'cross the pond ov'ah in England."

"Huh." Kate didn't know what else to say to that. The accent was horribly misleading. It didn't scream 'worldly academic' in her mind. That was probably a sad commentary regarding personal bias. More to the point, it was decidedly unhelpful. _Shame they couldn't teach you how to stress your 'er' sounds._ That seemed a bit petty to mention. She was determined to at least attempt being a lady, not a mean girl. _Yeah, Mom, you taught me better. I'm trying. But c'mon. Look at this fucking guy. Um. Frickin' guy._

Commenting proved unnecessary. Logan glanced over her left shoulder and tipped his chin indicatively. She turned forward in time to slow and stop a short ways from Castle and Kirkland's backs. A narrow glimpse between the two revealed a pair of ESU agents ahead investigating a gaping opening right in the middle of the forest floor. It was an irregular oval about four-feet in diameter at its widest point. One of the men was crouched with his sidearm in-hand, shining in a bluish LED flashlight beam while the other covered him, weapon raised. The light-bearer checked around inside the hole carefully. Within half a minute he stood and holstered both the torch and Glock. He nodded at the Lieutenant. All clear.

"Watch your step up here," Kirkland called at modulated volume with a glance back at them all. He and Rick diverged from one another in a wide berth around the hole.

The sheer incongruousness of the thing was too bewildering a sight to resist glimpsing closer up. As Beckett approached she slowed warily. Vines and roots enshrouded the circumference of the ledge. Vegetation yielded some to glimpses of the cracked cement underneath which had been poured a foot thick and reinforced with rebar. The layers of soil below that soon yielded to cement again in the curved arches of an underground pathway. Egresses vanished into the black at both the left and right. Feeble midday light spilled down in, providing a clear enough view as she edged close enough to see the bottom fifteen feet below.

Someone stared unblinkingly back up at her.

It all happened so quickly. Too terribly fast. There was a fleeting impression of a starkly beautiful countenance. A mother's elegance and etherealness by nose, cheekbones and lush mouth wed flawlessly to a father's crueler notes of masculinity by brow, chin, and jaw. She glimpsed the slope of a pallid, bare right shoulder and saw light reflect along a curve of deeply dark crimson hair—red like freshly spilled blood. Long. Shoulder-length or more. But, God-in-heaven, the eyes. Instantly arresting. Pools of soul-piercing pale grey shot through with splintered striations of rich violet that stabbed up into her like a thousand blades.

The sheer, staggering shock of the sight rocketed Kate into a windmilling retreat with an involuntary, clipped outcry of surprise. She collided into Logan even while peripherally noting the others ahead whirling in unison. Her weapon appeared in her grip through an automatic muscle response. "Th-there's someone—"

"Circle-up! Flash it!" Kirkland snarled before she could even finish the warning.

"Hey!' she heard Lanie protest shrilly as the other agents forcibly pushed the group closer together into a more easily defensible formation. They faced outward, crouched and leaning into the butts of their weapons, poised to unleash calamitous splashes of molten hell if even a leaf had twitched.

Two of them were already charging the hollow from either side. Beckett saw flash grenades being hurled in at opposing angles, heard the clatter of them striking and rebounding against the stone below. Above ground, Officer Bielsa began sprinting toward the opening with a flashlight and sidearm drawn, her expression blanked out with lethal commitment and pale with tamped-down panic. "On me!"

Dual blasts, though occurring in the subterranean level, could be heard for their jarring emissions over one-hundred-seventy decibels and seen for the glaring curtain of white light which blasted up from the mouth of the jagged opening brighter than the meager daylight. Concussive force shook the detective right down to her bones with a single, violent ripple that elicited a wordless gasp of agony. She felt Logan flinch. If he hadn't been gripping her vest she might've stumbled back forward and tumbled right into the damn hole.

The stun grenades had barely concluded their painful displays before Bielsa dove forward, sliding through dead leaves and plunging straight down into the yawning gap as sleek and agile as a kamikaze feline. The pair that had tossed in the flashbangs heeded her prior outcry for aid by snatching her vest at the waist and back, arresting the fall and keeping the woman aloft while she hung upside down, twisting dexterously one way and then swiftly the other with her beam cutting through the darkness. The woman rotated several times, but never fired her weapon. Seconds crept along as if the hands of the clock had become a muddied murk sucking at all attempts at progress.

"Clear," she called aloud moments later, sounding shaken. Then in a somewhat calmer tone, "Get me the fuck outta here, compañeros." Her fellows carefully hoisted her up, grunting with the effort, and deposited the agent onto solid ground where she assumed surer footing amidst gulping breaths. The light and pistol were jammed into their respective placements. Her guise shifted to Kirkland and she shrugged. "Nada, Lieu."

The image of those eyes was stamped in so deeply it was difficult for Beckett to think past the recollection of them. She felt naked. Vulnerable and indecently exposed. Even violated, which didn't make a lick of damned sense, but it prompted a swirl of revulsion in her guts for being touched which made her tug away from Logan and stand apart on shaky legs. Her lips worked twice without effect before she managed to convey, "There was someone."

No one seemed doubtful of her claim. Indeed, everyone was eying the opening as it were about to spew forth far worse things than their teammate's upper half.

The spattering of rain picked up its pace and became a steadier light shower.

"O-okay," Kirkland finally began with a gusty exhale moments later. "We knew there might be people here. This doesn't change the plan—it only increases the necessity of seeing it through."

"But who was that?" Joseph asked, ill-at-ease. "A victim or suspect?"

"Gotta be an enemy if he's running around free," Dickson mused aloud.

"Not necessarily," Lanie countered mildly, her eyes still wide from the encounter. "It's an island. There's no escape. You'd only have endless games of cat-and-mouse to keep you ahead of any potential pursuers."

"That was a cat," Beckett assured with grim conviction, thrusting off the lingering shock and strangely clinging sense of intrusion into her being. "Fuck that—worse."

"A man or woman?" Castle asked at her side. She hadn't even noticed the approach that brought him to her. He looked strangely collected under the circumstances. Not unafraid, but not panicked either. It took seeing his grip on her left shoulder to fully register its welcome warmth and pressure.

"I…" She closed her eyes and saw the stranger's pair again too vividly. It awoke an ache in her scars. "Yeah, definitely male. Young. Uh, there was an adult's maturity in his face and physique, but he looked young. Slender build, long red hair, and..." The words simply wouldn't come forth to describe those goddamn _eyes._

"And what, detective?" Kirkland rumbled.

"Calm. Icy calm," Beckett selected to share at length instead. "There wasn't even a fucking lick of fear visible. There wasnt...anything at all." A frown made a home for itself upon her lips even while that detail was recalled and spoken of within the same breath. _What...who the hell was that?_

"What the fuck," Dickson issued with his gaze shifting to the opening ESU was still covering. He grimaced and holstered his sidearm with clear reluctance.

Castle looked from the silent, enigmatic sinkhole to their general surroundings. He moistened his lips. "You said earlier that you didn't see any tracks, John."

Kirkland shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah. You'd expect we would have at least found some from Finch. They were wiped clean."

"Probably not by natural causes, hrm?"

He eyed the others as if expecting the answer to cause them some alarm. "Probably not." It did to some degree, regardless of the answer already being suspected.

"That doesn't really sound like an effort someone would go to if they were planning a getaway, does it?" The writer looked around their group, eventually ending while fixed on their tactical team leader again. "I, uh, think we should keep moving, Lieutenant. I think the sooner we're off of this island the better."

No one argued that sentiment.


	12. Chapter 12

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **1:35 PM, North Brother Island**

Lieutenant Kirkland emerged along with several other members of his team. Their footsteps upon the stairs of the side entrance yielded creaks and groans of protest. His men fanned out like a pack of wolves, assuming various placements along the perimeter of the building. "Alright," their fore's voice rose above the pattering rain, "it's clear. Everyone take a breather. Drop those packs for a few and get out of the rain, but don't get cozy. We're oscar mike in ten minutes."

Joseph gave a groan of receptiveness and shrugged free of the hefty backpack. Lanie did the same and arched her back in relief. Kate set her pack alongside theirs beneath a sheltering tree and breathed easier more from the resulting lack of constriction. Ethan and Logan shed theirs in turn and the company filed towards the stairs and side doorway that awaited.

The detective hung back as the others moved and talked together in low tones. A determined sense of disquiet had effectively severed any desire for company. She wanted time to be alone, away from them and this cursed island. Someplace where it could be just her and those pale grey, violet-flecked memories. They needed to be turned and twisted until she could unlock the meaning behind the enduring unsettling they had thrust like a skewering spear into her core. The figurative wound sat heavy in her breast like a real weight. Being psychosomatic didn't negate its contribution to the real dull pain in her joints.

"Seems fine," Joseph assured the others from the small porch at the top of the stairs.

Lanie followed after and gave a clipped shriek when her foot crumbled through the rotted floorboard of the third step. The doctor jerked free as if she'd been grabbed by something alive and ravenous instead and launched herself as spryly as a gazelle onto the landing above. Gasping for breath, she flattened a shaky palm against her chest. Then slapped Hawkin's shoulder and chided, "'Fine'?! Shit, son. How's it seem _now_?"

The younger man blinked owlishly behind his thick glasses, looked around, and thumped a meager fist upon the surrounding, waist-high porch wall. It produced no calamity. "Seems fine."

None of the buildings on the island conveyed certitude anymore, but the Nurses' Dormitory—as Castle had called it—appeared in better shape than most, hence the brief detour so that ESU could search it thoroughly.

That wasn't saying much. Castle had already acknowledged that decay had become more widespread since last he visited. They'd passed three other 'structures' along the south road that didn't even qualify for the label. One of them had been a red-brick facade that was remarkably whole, doorway and windows intact, but all three of its other sides were nothing but the bottom layer of concrete blocking and a few irregular layers of clinging bricks protruding from beds of tall weeds. The other two had been visible as they'd passed, situated beyond the treeline nearer to shore: the ancient lighthouse and its maintenance outbuilding glimpsed from the boat earlier. If not for Castle's revelation of their former purpose, the piles of crumbled debris would have remained unknown.

By contrast, the nurses' dormitory exterior was a sturdy brick and stone design that was startlingly akin to the apartment building Kate lived in before that abode was blown to smithereens. The similarities ended there. It was a cozier, homier looking place—or once was anyway—with a U-shaped design of three wings. Comparative in its layout to the hospital they were gradually progressing towards, but more domestic with its eaves, overhangs, and the wide arch sheltering a recessed front entryway.

"Beckett, can I have a moment?"

She glanced over her left shoulder to the ESU leader who stood in the rusted-ajar entrance of the chain-link fence enclosing the area. It was bent and leaning in several spots, irreparably worn down. Like so much of this place. She eyed the remains dripping dew while approaching, wondering why it had been a necessary inclusion back in the day. Had it been erected to keep the nurses safe from the patients they cared for? Was that a necessary security measure? Had it succeeded in its task?

"What's up?" she asked while pausing before John's crossed-arm stance.

The bearded man glanced past her to the side doorway well beyond them both and then back again. "Your, uh, partner…" Her hackles lifted immediately. "Does he seem okay to you?"

Beckett turned as well, but Castle hadn't come out after guiding the agents through the residence. _Exploring, no doubt._ _This place must seem like an old friend to him._ Regarding the other's dark brown eyes again, she frowned. "He seems fine. Handling this place better than most of us, in fact. Why do you ask?" The inquiry escaped her lips with a layer of displeasure bristling about it. Her own scattered thoughts were sapping her patience.

Kirkland lofted one palm where it resided as if to placate her. "It's nothing bad. I'd even agree with that assessment. His familiarity with this place has been a boon for more than just the obvious result." _Oh. Good._ "It's just that he seems distracted. Not in the sense of being a detriment," he clarified swiftly at her perched eyebrow. "But he's very quiet when he isn't responding to questions, you know? And he seems overly alert in the way he watches our surroundings. His head is on a constant swivel. It presents like hypervigilance, but he's outwardly calm. It's contradictory behavior, which is a little concerning."

"Oh, jeez," the detective emitted softly. "Okay, I hear you. Look," She halted though, exhaling a breath while considering where to begin. "He's, uh...damn. It's hard to explain." Frowning, she started again from a different track. "Castle has an extremely vivid imagination." John didn't react either way to that admittedly inane announcement, but he didn't interrupt either. "That's a blessing and a curse, Lieu. It doesn't prevent him from paying attention, but it's easy to assume as much on his behalf. You and me? We look around and see what we see of what's left. Rick does too, obviously, but he also pictures what it might have been like when this place was operational and full of people. Hell, maybe he even imagines what the area was like before settlement. Or before glaciers carved the landscape into what it is," she added somewhat ruefully. "Rick can't help picturing how all of this could go terribly awry on us too, you know? He can almost _see_ it happening. Imagination doesn't come with an on-off switch with him."

"Hmm. I guess that makes sense given his side gig."

 _Side gig_ , the woman parroted mentally and sighed inwardly. She didn't know whether to be sad or amused that Castle's status as a novelist had become a secondary detail in the minds of her fellow police officers. The passion and focus with which her shadow has thrown himself into her world, especially over the past year—and doubly so since her shooting—has eclipsed most of any associated glitz and glamour.

Was that a good thing, or bad? They have helped people as a partnership. They've brought justice to both victims and perpetrators. _But at what cost? Your books provide hope and a refreshing sense of curiosity for exploring the human mind and heart. A message that's conveyed to millions. Most certainly to me._ God, what if encouraging his work with the twelfth meant she was preventing some other young woman in need from being likewise comforted and inspired?

"Okay, well, thanks for the clarification," John added at length. Her brief silence seemed to have concerned him. Kate offered a small smile and nod to set him at ease before he stepped apart but was hardly aware of the receding footsteps as he rejoined his agents.

What would Castle say about the matter?

 _He'd sniff with disdain and boldly state: You're not the boss of me, work-wife, so kindly stop assuming responsibility for my choices._

The detective's upper half rocked with a huff of amusement. That thought had not dispelled her worries, but it was a welcome reminder that Rick was not, in fact, the youth Lanie put it 'writer-boy'. She trusted in the man's ability to balance the forces within himself, including the aspect which demanded freedom through an outpouring of words. Mentally, the subject was added to the long list of things that there never seemed to be enough time to discuss with one another.

Beckett turned to face the dwelling nearby but frowned again. It struck her after the fact how strange it was to have worried about something beyond her control. There was some culpability involved in encouraging her partner, yes, but nowhere near so much as to demand guilt. Castle would never levy an accusation like that against her.

It was those _goddamned_ eyes. It felt like they were still on her even now. Probing. Boring like diamond-tipped drill bits. Slicing like scalpels through her layers of self-defense and self-deception in the seeking of...she couldn't even fathom what. She rubbed at her arms while studying her surrounds warily.

 _This is your PTSD acting up, Katie. That's all. Snap the fuck out of it._

The detective forced herself into motion towards the three-winged house, refusing to acknowledge as she went that no symptoms of the psychological disorder had manifested physically. Her heart-rate and breathing were normal as she ascended the steps.

They remained normal when she sank a booted foot straight through the hole Lanie made. "Ack! Damn it."

The medical examiner leaned out of the doorway, wide-eyed, and beamed. "Twinsies!"

"Fuck off," the detective singsonged with a sedate elongation of the syllables. The other woman chortled. A ripple of amusement emitted from some of the ESU agents outside too. She ignored them and strode up into a long, rectangular foyer. Dark hardwood stairs slanted up towards the north wing of the house at her immediate left, stained by copious amounts of water damage and pale ovals of clinging mold. An archway at the right led up into what must have been a den or sitting room once but now lacked any identifiers either way. The hallway also continued forward into environs unknown. The faint odor of rot clung to the place like a miasma that had been bottled but improperly stoppered. It seemed to lurk behind the walls. "Where's Castle?"

Lanie glanced up from a tattered-looking book in her hands, bluish and hardcover. She shrugged. "Upstairs maybe? He was a few minutes ago."

"Whadda you got there?"

"I think it's a diary from one of the nurses that used to live here."

"You know how to tell whether you have a true nose for gossip? When you find yourself sniffing for it almost six decades into the past." Lanie answered with a furrow of her brow and tilt of her chin. She inhaled audibly through her nose a couple times and hmm'ed aloud. Kate hummed with mirth and, after a quick scan of their likely sturdiness, took the staircase up to the second floor. The wall-paper was faded but mostly still in place, a dated floral print that was actually rather quaint. Patches of its off-white, purple bloom surface shown paler than others, and the causality was readily evident in picture frames that lay shattered where they had fallen upon the steps. There was no trace of whatever photos or artwork might have been housed within them.

A trace of sorrow threatened to invade at the sight of such deterioration in what was once a probably lovingly tended to place. Swiftly upon its heels lurked the recollection of that unnerving stare, pale like smoke arising over charred ruins, obscenely famished for whatever she might be willing to unveil for them next.

Her voice was a bit strained around the name when she called it aloud, "Castle?"

Radiance was fairly abundant in its spill through the windows in the north wall. The author appeared, leaning head and shoulders out of a doorway halfway down the hall. "Hey. Time to move?"

"Soon," she answered, smiling as his presence helped banish that inner discomfort. "I was just making sure you hadn't fallen through the floor. Or some kinda sudden tear in the fabric of space-time that would've brought you back to this place in its heyday."

He flashed the breadth of a grin to hear her assume his usual role of depositing a crazy theory. "Mhm. I'd probably be surrounded by cute nurses right now if that were the case. They'd be gasping in startlement. Maybe giggling prettily. Or coquettishly," he gasped with a waggle of his eyebrows and darted back out of sight into the room. Goodness. The man was surrounded by ruination, but he shone to her like a beacon of the warm golden sunlight denied to them in favor of the day's hazier offerings.

"Keep that commentary up and you might need their clinical expertise." She paused in the doorway and blinked at the sight of a fully furnished bedroom. Most of the places they'd seen had been utterly stripped of possession. A vanity, cream-toned bergère, bed, and dresser stood as if held in a vigil for their previous owner. An old gramophone stood on its last legs with its tarnished brass horn corroded so thoroughly there were a few chunks missing. Grime coated the vanity mirror, rendering it into a flat and gaping opaque eye staring back at the room without iris or pupil.

"There are still clothes in the closet," the author stated, though he was standing at one of the room's two windows presently. "What happened that the occupant didn't have time to pack? Why didn't anyone else tend to her belongings in the aftermath when they were closing this place down for good?"

Beckett knew they were rhetorical questions. He was sharing them aloud because he thought she might be curious too. _You do that sometimes._ "Is this where Lanie found that diary?"

"It was in the dresser. I tisked at her for taking it." He rubbed his right bicep after saying so, indicating an amusing impact that must have resulted from having taken the trouble to do so.

"Three minutes, folks." It wasn't shouted, but Kirkland was clearly audible outside over the sound of rain spattering against the roof.

The novelist turned from the window and they headed downstairs together with her in the lead. A firmer gust of wind swept across the exterior as they went, moaning where it hung-up in the eaves. The abundance of broken windows allowed its invasion to stir and tumble loose debris in the hallway.

"Do you think this place will survive Harbinger?"

"It's weathered plenty so far," Castle answered neutrally.

She nodded while considering the evidence they had seen first-hand up to that point. Her lips conformed to a plump, pensive line. "Maybe it would be better if the rest of it fell over this time. Then this place could finally rest."

Beckett paused in the porch doorway at the feel of his palm resting on the ball of her left shoulder. She turned, frowning somewhat at his seconds-long, silent stare.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She hesitated a second too long. "Sure." Her companion arched a dubious eyebrow, nothing more. "I am," the other stressed mildly, covering his gloved fingers with her own. "I'm feeling a bit sore is all, you know? It's making me a little tired and cranky, that's all."

Castle nodded silently at first. He hesitated a moment before continuing, "I don't question whether you can handle this. I'm sure you know better than that. But there are legitimate, documented impacts that arise from wandering around places like this, Beckett. A sweeping sense of abandonment in places of prior habitation is unsettling on an intrinsic level for almost all of us. That effect can be compounded for people who place larger amounts of faith in the systems of governance which hold civilization together—like some cops, for one example. Seeing places like this where it's been rendered effectively meaningless isn't something everyone simply shrugs off."

Hazel eyes were swept by a few quick swoops of sable lashes. "Y'know, I hadn't really considered the island in those terms." She pursed her lips into a firmer line while facing out the doorway ahead again. Down at the group gathering their things and shouldering the heavy packs. "It's true though. In a way, I look around this place and perceive an unsettling, underlying failure on all of our parts as representatives of society." The woman turned back to him with a small quirk of a smile. "That's some pretty good shrinkage. And here I am paying for the service from Dr. Burke like a sucker."

It was his turn to blink rapidly. "You're in therapy?"

"Oh. Yeah." A soft sigh worked its way out. "This, uh, isn't really the time or place to get into that. Add it to the list, huh?"

He sighed too, not needing to ask what she meant regarding all that had gone sadly unsaid between them. Still, the writer smiled somewhat. "Next summer maybe. _All_ summer at this rate." Kate huffed briefly in something akin to an amused agreement and led the way down the broken porch stairs.

She jolted to a halt at the sound of footsteps following after the two of them and turned. Castle did the same. Ethan Dickson stared back at them. There wasn't time to conjure some sliver of hope that he hadn't overheard the mention of her being in therapy. His small dark eyes found hers while a smile crept gradually outward. It called to mind a dagger being slowly and irrevocably pulled from its sheath.

 _Shit..._

* * *

A/N: Yeesh. It's unreal how fast the gap between these updates accumulates. And this wasn't even so bad of one. Dang life and its necessities. You folk remain a most welcome distraction from that with your reviews and messages. Oh! I also wanna make a special thank you to our own Lord of Kavaka for including this story on the twitter feed for CastleFicPromoter. That's so cool. I remain entirely bemused how I only just recently discovered that resource, but I'm glad I did.


	13. Chapter 13

**Monday, October 27th, 2011**

 **2:20 PM, North Brother Island**

After being on the island for an hour, it was easier to understand the concern expressed by Ulan and Eamon. There was no safe place to rest one's back. A twanging of instinct drew Beckett into a turn at the waist to regard the woods and tangled undergrowth behind her. No threat was apparent. While she was gazing, the hospital felt like it bore down its own chill scrutiny. A shiver rattled her shoulders while she jerked her chin back around.

The Teeth of Seven Sorrows glared through the black, unblinking gape of so many windows.

There may have been a time the building conveyed some manner of assurance for patients with its stoic, stalwart design. If so, that positive semblance was long gone. The intentional austerity combined with unwitting decades of neglect created something that no longer merely harbored or concealed madness. It embodied it. It felt like she was looking at something only half real. As though behind the facade there would be braces aiding in the stabilization of such a grand set piece. It didn't seem possible that any place could come to so strikingly mirror the suffering it had witnessed.

The Teeth denied its rightful place among every other building on the island by looking solid enough to endure another sixty years of abandonment. Discolorations, broken windows, and several lost or listing shutters didn't do much to detract from that. Grey stonework sprawling outward to either side was expertly set, solid-looking.

It evoked an uncomfortable level of awareness for her own impermanence which a sniper had already made abundantly clear and that, in turn, made it impossible not to infer a sense of latent hostility.

The front portal stood ajar the way ESU had left it. Despite accumulated rust, they had managed to get both doorways fully open. Voices of her fellows drifted out from a foyer that was only dimly apparent from the outside. They spoke stealthily in anxious tones. She could discern enough to know they were discussing the storm.

Harbinger was still a few hours from bringing its fury to bear in spectacular fashion; yet within its ever-encroaching shadow crept steadier streams of more insistent winds gusting around twenty-five miles per hour. Groaning timbers and rustling mantles of the trees were an unbroken chorus. The sight of them struck their observer less like a display of sympathetic fear than it did some frenzied, ritualized dance intended to provoke the weather to greater hostility. Larger drops of rain lashed down in slanted sheets. Strikes upon the foliage, stone, and the wooden shingles of the roof produced a cacophony worthy of accompanying such erraticism.

Spatters stung the detective's exposed face and cell-phone equipped right hand while she inwardly urged the switchboard of the NYPD to connect her to Espo faster.

She wasn't in a hurry to rejoin the others, but at least in there walls remained erect to surround her the way her inner defenses were proving less capable. Inside, that incessant sense of being observed by their unknown lurker on North Brother Island could be dismissed as the mildly neurotic phantom she knew damn well it was. Beckett had girded herself for combating the nefarious influence of hypervigilance over the past month in preparation for returning to work. Too many other elements were working in tandem with that symptom out here. Dickson's return from her troubled past coupled with his newfound armament in the knowledge of her being in therapy was not helping matters.

 _You only wish you were paranoid. He is out to get you, Katie._

"Detective?"

She twitched in surprise at the voice of the returning switchboard operator. "I'm here."

"Thank you for holding. I have Detective Esposito on the line. I'm patching you now."

"Thanks."

A moment later her colleague's familiar voice came through. It was difficult to hear over the background noise on both their lines. She turned her volume up to full and brought the phone back to her ear in time to catch the man saying, "—there, Beckett?"

"Hey. I'm here. What's up? Any news?"

A wordless grunt of annoyance provided grim foreshadowing. "Not much. We found Finch's place easy enough and got a picture of his boat, but there was no info on where it's, uh, berthed. Every marina we've called about it so far is up to their ears getting things ready for Harbinger. We're waiting on call-backs." He paused to exchange less audible words with someone on his end, and then continued. "As for the guy's apartment, we didn't see any signs of forced entry or rummaging. He was no neat-freak, so, we can't exactly rule that possibility out, but so far it's looking like a safe bet that whatever got him dead was exclusive to his visit to the island." That had already seemed to be the most likely scenario, but every point of confirmation was worthy information. "We'll keep the personal motives in mind anyway, but…" He didn't finish. It was easy to picture those burly shoulders shrugging.

"What about Rikers?"

" _Si,_ we got in touch. The warden wasn't around, but Ryan spoke to one of the prison's supervisors. They didn't report anything out of the ordinary. The description of Finch's boat didn't net us squat—they log most passing vessels solely by their hull ID numbers, which is like a car's VIN, I guess, and our picture doesn't show that. There're a lot of files on a laptop we found in Finch's place. Too many, really. It's a mess. The eggheads have it now. Maybe they'll find us an image that has what we need."

"Send someone out there with pictures of Finch and the boat when you nail down that HID. Maybe those'll help jog some memories."

"Ah, no can do, Beckett. They're closing the bridge to the island. Most of the prison staff is actually being sent home, which is causing a lot of confusion. The guy Ryan spoke to said it was chaos out there. More than might be expected, I mean."

"Shit," she muttered to herself.

"Huh?"

"Nothing. Listen, get someone on the line while they're still around and get the addresses of the relevant workers' private residences if you have to. It's not exactly the season for cruising out there; someone had to've seen that boat and I damn well wanna know what it was doing when they did."

Esposito grunted again, in amusement that time. "We're already working on a list."

"Oh. Good."

A few seconds passed while her mind raced over the scant details gleaned and the courses stretching out ahead of them. Espo's voice intruded, "How is it out there? Sounds like hell."

"It's definitely getting worse." Movement within the mouth of the opened doorway caught and held her gaze. Shadowy figures flitted through somewhat less dense swaths of the same. Multiple cold beams of bluish LED light cut through the murk from their places fastened upon the vests of team members. Rick and the exploratory wave of ESU agents had returned. _About damn time too._

"According to the news, the storm is sticking to the predicted track and speed. You sh— have —nough time." Kate unconsciously pressed the phone closer to her ear as if proximity might overcome signal disruption. "Mobile lin— sagging under the weight of the call traffic right now. Everyone's checking in with loved ones or whatever, so, call me here at the precinct if you need anything."

"Damn. You're already dropping in and out. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to."

"Repeat your last? You're cutt— and out on me."

Her lips pursed into a line of flat annoyance. "No shit, Sherlock."

"Well, I heard that clear as day," her fellow replied dryly. "Lucky me. If you can't get cell signal, hop onto the radio frequencies. They're still transmitting audio and video just fine. For now."

"Alright."

"We have a meeting in ten with a couple of the Forensics and CSU members who worked Finch's initial crime scene in Queens. I'll try you again afterward. Later."

"See ya." She hunched her upper half to create a windfall from the weather and wiped away some of the wetness on the cell before tucking it back into the water-resistant vest pocket.

The work ahead was almost enough of a distraction to muffle the unease which accompanied moving back into the hospital's foyer. It's gaping, toothless maw led into a throat of immediate size and breadth. A blunted vestibule and the main hall beyond it claimed all three of the building's stories and sprawled out over thirty-thousand square feet. It was like entering a cathedral.

A large, multi-faced admittance and service desk was sectioned off by a waist-high shell of stained and faded hardwood. The team had piled their packs of gear on the floor nearby there and stood in a loose huddle of rumbles, murmurs, and alertly turning glances.

The shorn rectangle of a room was entered and exited by several portals that were visible in the meager light which slanted in through so many tall, sectioned windows. Pairings of ESU personnel were positioned nearby to each of the ones on the ground floor. A triplet of tall, matching French doorways faced a rear courtyard. More illuminating still was the diffused daylight entering through a jagged hole in the ceiling. It was at least twenty-feet in diameter. Water poured in through several steady downspouts at its rough edges. Noisy spatters pooled and ran in muddy rivulets through dust, dirt, and grime. There was no discerning what material had originally been laid beneath their feet.

There wasn't much left.

The aforementioned collapse Rick spoke of during the briefing at the precinct had not been understated. It had been calamitous for the main hall. Well over half of the room simply dropped away in sheer slopes. Shattered stonework, bristling spikes of torn rebar, and splintered timbers bristling with rusted nails lined its edges like an unsettling esophagus rimmed with fangs. From what Finch's photographs revealed, she knew if it were a clear day the pour of sunlight through the hole in the roof would reveal the sickening sight awaiting two levels below and gathered en mass in the pool. Presently, however, it brooded in dimness down there like a swallowed secret trying to keep itself et.

"Why doesn't it stink?" she heard one of the men from ESU ask.

In fact, the hospital was fairly ripe with myriad sources of active decay, including the corpses farther down. Given that awaiting feature, however, Kate would have expected to be overpowered by the stench too. It was barely distinguishable from the other olfactory assaults.

"The major release of gases from initial decomposition are long done," Lanie provided neutrally. "It means they've been here a while. This crumbling must have been pretty recent. There wouldn't be much left otherwise. If an abundance of rainwater builds up in that pool we're going to be looking at a sharp acceleration of decay. The whole, uh…" She stopped, grimaced. "We could lose them all very quickly now that they're exposed to the natural elements."

"Great," someone else muttered. "Dead-guy soup."

Beckett turned sharply to see who had said it, but her pent-up admonishment was trundled over by sharp syllables from Kirkland. "Keep your fucking mouths shut and your eyes front. Or did you forget we had company on this island?" No one answered. "Doc," he added more calmly to Lanie, "we'll get you down there soon. I need a few minutes to organize who's staying and who's moving onward."

"Whoa, what?" Beckett turned from the view of the room to take her place in the huddle. The flashlight beams fixed to the others' chests rotated as they regarded her, effectively putting her under a spotlight. "What's going on?"

The ESU Lieutenant across from her hesitated an instant before answering, clearly sensing the onset of a disagreement. "We need to split-up our efforts. Some of my people will accompany you, Dr. Parish, and Dr. Hawkins downstairs. That's your guys' area of expertise—the actual crime scene. Mine is locating anyone else who might be waiting to be found on this island, hostile or otherwise."

"You've gotta be kidding me," she protested volubly.

A wave of uncomfortable silence broke and spread its upflow over the group for several distinct seconds. The tactical team clearly wasn't accustomed to being questioned in the field.

The frowning agent-in-charge answered stiffly, "With all the backtracking involved, it took us over forty minutes to clear the isolation cells downstairs and the area of the first two floors surrounding this hall. That was just the nearest rooms, mind you. That's not your fault," he added with a glance at Castle, who was indeed broadcasting discomfort, as if thinking he was letting them down as their guide. "It's too much space and too little accessibility," Kirkland continued while refocusing on Beckett. "If that other major building is anything like this—hell, even if it's not—we're only going to have enough time for a cursory run through it to search for any potential suspects or survivors. If we don't split up to tackle that now, it won't be an option. Given that it's the most viable site for habitation, I want it done."

"We have," she paused to check her watch, "just under two hours yet."

"And it won't be enough. I'm not going to attempt gaining more time by moving my team fast and blind through this kind of bush when we have potential hostiles present. You saw one guy. There could be ten more out there waiting for my people to give them a window of inattention to take advantage of."

The logic was sound. Kate knew that. She also knew that as their only guide, Rick was going to be assigned where he was needed most, which was with the active exploratory group.

"They don't need me downstairs. I'm going with you."

Kirkland winced and strode across the several feet separating them. His lowered voice was becoming laced with anger. "Can I talk to you in private?"

"They don't need me," Kate reiterated without budging. "It's evidence collection. I'm the one who tries to assemble the puzzle afterward using the pieces they put together."

That was hedging the truth mighty thin. Damned if Kirkland didn't know better.

Lanie spoke up, though clearly hesitant. "We have so little time, honey. We're going to need every pair of hands we can get downstairs. Even if these guys weren't too busy watching our backs to assist, they aren't trained in the procedures of evidence collection. You'd be a big help."

There was no good counter-argument in her mind. A lame attempt emerged, "Lieu." The lean of significance spoke volumes of her reluctance to split from her partner. A darted glance at the author revealed him staring back at her. He must have been equally opposed to the idea, but his lips curved in a small, melancholy smile. She read the defeat in it.

"We just don't have enough time," Kirkland sighed, not unsympathetic to her plight.

"You don't need her permission," Ethan spoke up from beyond them both.

"I'm not asking for it," the other shot back without looking away from her.

An unwelcoming tone didn't faze the interloper to their conversation much, but it was one of the other ESU guys who muttered, "Sure looks like it, Lieu. Let's just get moving. Sooner we start the sooner we're outta this freak show and this friggin' storm."

The tactical leader's eyes were wide and his expression livid as he turned, slow and certain, from squaring off with Kate to behold his subordinate. "Open that mouth one more time, Jones. I'm asking you to."

The addressed agent blanched. He didn't reply, but the scrunched tension of his posture cast off minute signals of potential rebellion. It was apparent in a few other faces too, which was concerning. This was not the time or place for the command structure to fall apart.

 _More influence of this dreadful place hard at work. Shit._

Beckett stepped between the riled pair of men to approach Castle. "You stay on Kirkland like glue, okay? Just…" She stopped, huffed. "Just be careful for Christ's sake."

Her companion's smile, such as it was at the time, didn't relent or expand. But it endured. "I would've done my best for your sake. No need to bring out the big guns."

"You've misunderstood the hierarchy of who you answer to now. Get yourself hurt or lost and divine punishment will seem like a sunny day in the park compared to my wrath."

Castle's eyes, pools of midnight blue and slashes of reflected light, widened in comical alarm. "Ten-four."

Kirkland, breathing easier, nodded to her as he passed them by and called out the names of several team members. The secondary huddle branched off for instruction while the investigative element of the group began disgorging and redistributing the gear they needed from Rick's and Ethan's packs.

"We're taking Dickson off your hands," the author commented quietly aside to her as they worked. "That ought to count for something, hrm?" He bumped her off-center with a brutish nudge of his shoulder and grinned when she pushed sharply back at him to lesser effect. That newfound muscle mass didn't sway so easily as it once had. Humor gusted apart like scattered dust when Castle added, quieter still, "You be careful too. Please?"

Something about the way his voice scraped over the single-word request elicited a pause to evaluate. He met her gaze without a change of expression but the wizened crinkles often lining the corners of his gaze when he was amused were present. Not in the spirit of humor.

Cheekiness left her high and dry. Beckett answered with a squeeze of his forearm.

Soon afterward the team assembled fully again at the front entrance. Four agents were going, including Kirkland and Jones, whose loose lips had apparently earned him being right where their agent-in-charge could keep an eye on him. _Good choice._

Ulan and Eamon towered behind her. Beckett would have sent them with Rick. Of all the people she trusted to watch his back, they were optimal. She worried her goodwill with Kirkland was disappearing quickly, though, and lodged no protest.

"I want updates every two minutes," the Lieutenant instructed with a glance over the six troops remaining behind. "In fact, all of you should be on your tac-freqs from this point forward. Splitting up obviously wasn't the plan, but your radios were programmed to simplified controls. For example, Dr. Hawkins, you'd turn the dial on top to the number one for a channel that will be exclusive to your specific unit. Number two will be the group I'm taking. Three, which you should all be set on right now, is the general team frequency. Simple enough, yeah? Switch them off while you're on-scene downstairs if you must. Otherwise, stay tuned in."

He shifted where he stood and added, "While only three are in active use at all times, there are technically twelve options dedicated to this operation. If you need to communicate with someone directly, hail them to one of those alternates by stating their name and then the desired channel. I'd recommend starting with twelve and working backward since those are the least likely to be utilized by ops." Bless the man. He hadn't looked at Beckett or Castle directly while explaining. That was probably a pretty thin veneer over why the information had been included, but at least he hadn't singled them out.

"As for those main channels," Kirkland continued while focusing on Lanie and Joseph, "there's going to be a steady stream of chatter on the line that won't make much sense. It might be disorienting. There won't be many gaps and you might find yourself hesitant to interrupt. Don't be. Your guys' work specifically is all about noticing which details are missing from a crime scene or assessing others that are present but shouldn't be. That makes your input more valuable than anyone's."

Beckett shared a look with Lanie, who smirked back at her. It was hard to tell whether she was preening over the compliment or if she found the idea of being described as 'hesitant to interrupt' hilariously misplaced. Surely a bit a both.

"In addition to connecting all of us," their tactical leader continued, "this feed is being sent to a whole other team on the other end of the line who sort the raw data we give them and feed us back streamlined logistics. You're familiar with the design, I'm sure. I mention it now because you might get diverted to a private channel by one of them and instructed to go somewhere or turn your camera to get a better angle on something. Do the best you can to comply if that happens, but don't _ever_ go off on your own. Someone will usually be assigned alongside you prior to any such request being made. In the event they aren't, you damn well find someone. I mean it," he added with stern gaze raking over the assembly. "Don't even turn a corner without one of us leading the way."

The pair of doctors looked a little uneasy. They nodded.

"Alright," Kirkland sighed. "Beckett, it's your show on this end. Bielsa is my second."

The detective glanced briefly back at the woman who had braved the island's underbelly not long ago in the woods. No hesitation, no ordering someone else to do it. The woman had simply acted on behalf of the moment's necessity. She frowned under Kate's scrutiny and nodded stiffly before refocusing on Kirkland.

"She'll keep everyone coordinated in the absence of anything you specifically ask for. When both teams have completed their respective tasks, we'll select a rendezvous and head back to the boat together." Kirkland's dark gaze passed across his subordinates behind her again, no doubt seeking signs of trouble or unrest about leaving her in charge. Nothing worthy of concern must have been evident because he nodded in seeming satisfaction and turned away to exit. "Alright then. Let's move."


	14. Chapter 14

"10-4, detective, but—" the young man on the other end of the radio stopped, sighed audibly, and stated in plain language, "Look, we've combed the footage several times. There's no capture of whoever you saw in the woods. It's a chest cam, remember. The angle just wasn't there."

Beckett huffed, irritated. She replied by rote when the tech signed off the private channel and switched back to whatever one he was working in otherwise. She did the same, but was really only partially aware of the letters and numerical values and being uttered by ESU in their alien jargon relating to the field of engagement and the teams' movements through it.

It went as close to silent as it ever seemed to get when everyone came to a halt within the first floor west stairwell. Peeled and cracking beige walls dirtied what daylight managed to eke through grimy windows and rebound its way to the gloomier interior. A narrow, revolving metal staircase led up and down from where they stood. It was too cramped for more than two people to navigate comfortably and looked like every bit its age. An ESU member gripped one of the mooring beams that extended above and below and leaned inward to look down. He jerked sharply away when the metal groaned and shifted. It swayed slightly with tortured squeals that tumbled below and reverberated back up at them in a series of deeper groans. Dust trembled loose from above and fell in a slowly descending cloud.

"That's great," Hawkins muttered, waving a hand before his scrunched visage.

"Shit," the same agent grumbled by way of agreement. "The whole thing has shattered its anchoring brackets, Sarge. The ones above seem to be holding, but otherwise, it's hanging loose."

"Unnavigable?" Bielsa asked.

"Not necessarily, but it'll make one helluva racket." He looked back at the CSU technician. "You don't get seasick easily, do you, kid?"

Hawkins groaned miserably.

"Kirkland, Castle," Beckett spoke into the radio on the secondary frequency. "Callback on six."

A moment later she heard the ESU Lieutenant's voice come through, but it was difficult to hear over the howling of the wind. "Go, Six."

"It's Beckett. We're at the west stairwell. It isn't looking good. Is there another way down?"

"No—uh, negative," Castle answered after a brief pause.

She could almost peer into that fleeting gap before he'd spoken and see Kirkland gesture for the author to relay the data on their behalf. An attempt at putting her mind at ease amidst her partner's absence from her side. It was embarrassing to be coddled even in such a diminutive manner. It worked like a charm. Rick's voice was a welcome gust of warm reassurance.

"The stairs _are_ functional," her wayward shadow continued. "We used both the east and west ones during the initial sweep-and-clear. The latter is in ugly shape, but we took it slow and it did the job. That cave-in split both sublevels in half. More completely than I'd imagined earlier, I mean. There's no easy way across either floor within itself and the debris in the way is a mix of timbers, stone, and broken glass." He paused amidst a particularly forceful gust that made her wince from its volume through the radio. "Beckett?"

"I'm still here."

"Listen, don't attempt making a path across like Finch did, okay? If all of this structural damage is as recent as we suspect, there's no reason to assume it has settled into a stable position." The implied image of a loose concrete slab shifting in its set and sliding out from underfoot or crashing down on their unsuspecting heads left no room for disagreement.

"10-4. That's all. Beckett out." She shook her head while regarding an expectant Sergeant Bielsa. "The second sub-level's east entrance is locked and damaged from the pictures we saw at the precinct and there's no way across to the west entrance from that side in any case. It's this path or nothing."

"We'll take it two at a time and leap-frog this _puta_ ," the other began in clipped reply. "The first pair steps off at the next landing to secure it while the next pair goes by. Hoffman—you and me first, then you two, docs, then the hot ticket and Beckett. You two on our six," she added with a glance at Ulan and Eamon.

Logan—the 'hot ticket' as it were—showed no reaction other than to shift the set of his pack more comfortably across his shoulders in preparation to move.

"Casey, Greene," Bielsa added to their final pairing, "this room is your baby." They nodded.

"You placed me in the order twice," the officer who'd checked the stability of the staircase previously said with a feigned frown of confusion at Bielsa. Hoffman. Beckett couldn't recall his first name. Jeff? Geoff.

" _Mierda_ , no," the woman replied in grim amusement. "We all know where you belong. _Ándale_ , meat-shield. _Ahora._ "

"To deflect and swerve," Hoffman chimed back in a blatant skew from the NYPD motto, but the banter waned to a sharp grimace as the narrow-featured man eased onto the hanging spiral staircase. The structure held the burden without apparent trouble, but his weight elicited a few long, nerve-grating squeals. "It actually feels okay. Lotta sway but zero bounce, for what that's worth."

"Anyone else inside knows exactly where we are now," the Sergeant said with an impatient wave of one hand. "Go."

It would have been difficult to state which was worse afterward: eventually following the others down the staircase with its awful racket and sickening pendulum motion, or waiting for her and Logan's turn in the brief interims of the others' advances. Every idle moment grated on the detective. Each step taken was one farther away from the man she worried about more than herself. It felt like longer, but once they were moving the descent progressed quickly enough and without mishap. Deeper into gloom they went and more thickly into the stench of dampened rot. By the second sub-level, they were navigating purely via flashlight beams again. It felt like the temperature dropped by several degrees.

Castle's descriptions of the hospital were spot-on. The main hall may have been invitingly open, but beyond that point, the corridors and rooms closed into narrow and stunted spaces. Swarming blackness compounded the sense of constriction as they continued. The second lower landing, like the first, was smallish and square with an empty door frame.

"This is beginning to feel like an intentionally antagonistic design," Hawkins observed aloud. "A hospital like this should be running two wide main halls on each floor spanning three strips of rooms: one at either exterior wall for patient housing and a central series of utility, medical, and office suites. You could argue the arrangements and create separate isles of dormitories and medical wings based on their respective functions, but the basic layout would still maximize efficiency in either case. This is an aberration. The last place you want to administer whimsy like this is in an asylum. The very foundation of mental health is a sense of personal security. Who could ever feel safe here?"

"Not me," Hoffman muttered from their fore.

"Ulan, Eamon: bottom of the stairs," Bielsa instructed neatly into the gap afterward and the others moved ahead with the twins watching like pillars of shadow in the waning glow of light behind.

A mass of tumbled materials ended the pitch-black passage prematurely thirty feet ahead. Within their section of it, a narrow path was cleared, probably by Finch. Debris sat piled in heaps at either side. It necessitated filing through one-by-one. The deceased urban explorer's structural band-aid remained in place too; a single metal beam against the right wall, a thoroughly rusted, broken piece from a larger whole, which stood as a repurposed support strut beneath naked and cracked wooden beams.

"Our predecessor was very determined," Hawkins murmured. "That H-beam is rolled steel. A section that size probably weighs around two-hundred pounds. I'm… Hmm. I'm uncertain how he managed to lift the broken section of ceiling and stabilize it long enough to insert a makeshift brace. That seems like a two-man job at the very least." He stood under the ragged hole and squinted upwards while directing his flashlight beam into the gap. "Strange to see the beam shored off at the top end like that too. Steel is immensely strong. Its failure threshold is around thirty-six thousand pounds per square inch. It looks like it was...I don't know." He frowned deeply after admitting as much. "Some kind of torsional force perhaps, though how _that_ might've occurred is anyone's—"

Bielsa, her expression flat, grabbed the CSU technician by the back of his tactical vest and reeled him a few awkward steps away from the source of intrigue. "Let's not stand under the hole, huh, Doc? I'd rather not see the missing half of it come down and make a mess out of you."

The dark-skinned young man grimaced and nodded ready agreement. The ill-fitting tactical helmet bobbed at his crown and slid down over his brow. "Y-yes, of course. You can call me Joe, by the way."

The ESU agent started to bite back something swift and sharp but hesitated as realization dawned and blinked at him instead. She lifted an eyebrow.

"Or, uh, Doc is fine. Yeah." Joseph cleared his throat and retreated to the back of the group.

They continued toward the aged, unchained doorway that was their goal ahead.

As the agents were stacking up at either side of it in preparation to enter, Beckett heard Lanie amusedly murmur to Hawkins. "'You can call me Joe?'" She snorted stealthily. "Since when?"

The other's deeper skin tone concealed a furious blush, but his scrunched posture gave it away.

"Beckett?" Bielsa murmured.

"Count it off," the detective answered quietly while taking her place in the line-up, weapon in hand and the other grasping Logan's right shoulder.

Their fore cycled from three fingers to one in a silent count. Then Hoffman pushed through the decaying portal with his MP5 raised and ready. The others streamed in behind him like a quietly moving wave of black. They branched apart, two-by-two, to fan out left and right as they advanced.

The miasma of decay was much stronger at its source. It was like hitting an invisible wall.

"Oof—fuck," Bielsa expelled, but it didn't slow her down.

It was a large room even with the massive rectangle of the pool assuming the dominant portion of its space. The whole floor had been deeply dug into its earthy home with a twenty-five-foot ceiling across its two-hundred-foot length and seventy-foot breadth. Their torchlight, diffused by distance, barely illuminated the far walls enough to glean any detail. What it did touch conveyed the same message of precarious ruin. Piles and piles of debris lined the room's outer circumference. Bowl-shaped, the exterior build-ups fed into smaller doses of tumbled down disheveledness towards the interior. All of it bristled shattered studs, chalky remains of crumbled plaster, and flaky scraps of tar paper. Nature had invaded here too, but nothing lived. Scattered leaves crunched underfoot and branches snapped from their parent boughs littered the area.

The swimming pool at the center of it all felt like it bore the pull of a singularity. She could discern where the darkness loomed more densely at its center. Unseen, coldly discarded corpses rose up in an irregular conical formation. Even a strictly peripheral awareness threatened to seize up her limbs and lock her into a blank-faced, stupefied stare. It felt like every dead pair of eye sockets thereat was watching them move. Waiting for attention. _Look at us. Witness what they did. Have you ever even imagined such callousness as our grim fates?_

Somehow Beckett managed to resist the urge and kept pace with Logan.

Hoffman succumbed to the inexorability of the lure. His voice spilled out like blood gushing from a mortal wound. "Oh, god." It shook audibly when he swiftly added in a more plaintive tone, "Oh, fuck me."

" _Muévelo_ , Officer!" Bielsa snarled with a hard elbow striking the man in the back.

Her companion stumbled and almost fell. He staggered to a halt, threw up in a sudden, ghastly spout, stumble forward several more steps and burst with nausea for a second, more violent time. Whether by grisly luck or determination he kept shambling forward even as it was happening.

The horrible sounds of his struggle almost undid Kate where she stood, pale and quivering with her jaw clenched, sucking hard breaths through parted lips. She and Logan had stopped to cover the wavering duo from their side of the room. No one living was visible beyond their small group. _Thank God. We'd probably be fucking dead._

"E-Right," Hoffman choked aloud and spat. "Moving."

"E-Left," Logan rumbled like a deeper echo. "Movin'." His voice was surreal even in a succinct delivery. A stroke of eerie calm within the turbulence of the moment. Same as Bielsa resumed doing with her companion, Beckett maintained a guiding grasp on the mercenary's shoulder and accompanied, step-for-step, with her weapon half-raised around his right side.

Entry right and left referenced passages on opposing sides of the floor about midway of its length, what had to be the men's and women's locker rooms and showers. Neither were equipped with doorways. The white bricking simply ended and turned inward to admit visitors.

When Logan stopped abruptly in his tracks she collided into a flush press against his back.

Damn it. He smelled good. Some kind of aftershave or cologne. Subtly applied. It could have been the cheapest brand on the market and it would've smelled like heaven given the fouler odors which prevailed at the time. "What is it?" she snapped, perturbed by the injection of appeal while backing off.

"Maintain position." He started to move on but stopped short again when she automatically began to accompany. Kate wasn't attempting to be obtuse. The other's tone mislabeled the message: it didn't sound like he was trying to give her an order and so she didn't comprehend the necessity to remain. A turn at the neck laid those gas-flame blues upon her, but they weren't narrowed in anger. They bore a neutral width and shone like polished sapphires in the torchlight beaming from her vest.

"Wh—" Her voice fled from her throat. Just like that. Gone like a bird startled from its leafy home and shot into the sky. Away, away, away while she stared down at what an altered angle of his torso permitted a glimpse of.

The tiled floor leading into the locker room was relatively clear of detritus, almost the white it had originally been except for widespread brownish discolorations. It was layered with dirty footprints leading into the chamber. Varied sizes, all barefoot. So many. It was a bewildering mass of impressions further obfuscated by slim lines that cut through the stains in more pallid tracks of cleaner white.

For one precious moment, she thought they might have found survivors after all.

Then she realized the brownish hues weren't some kind of mold or grime.

Blood. Old, dried bloodstains. And the long unbroken tracks streaking through it were drag marks where the heels of the dead had skimmed uselessly along during their removal and consignment to a makeshift mass grave.

Beckett was hurtled into the past. She saw herself, Rick, and Deputy John Autry standing at the head of narrow cement stairs leading from a barn floor into a concealed subterranean sprawl. Stairs smattered with childishly small hand and foot imprints ascending clumsily in blood, widespread in an achingly clear retreat of blind terror. She smelled again the time-worn wood, hay, and a combination of oil and diesel fuel. She could feel the lingering perversion and madness of Llewellyn Matthews where he had been his truest self in all his irredeemable maliciousness. She heard Castle's grasping attempt to explain the enduring trail of his ages-old flight: _I-It's part of the story._

"It's the kill room," she heard herself say, hardly audible.

"Wait here," Logan deposited again more quietly and moved inside without another word.

And she did. For all the urgency which sought to propel her into being a worthy witness on behalf of the world's victims—for all of her self-administered conviction not to flinch in the face of adversity—the detective voluntarily stayed behind for the very first time in her entire law-enforcement career.

For five full seconds.

The mercenary glanced partially backward again at the sound of her boots following. He stared for a silent span and took account of the desolate determination in her eyes. Then, at length, turned to continue. He did not attempt to dissuade her again.

* * *

 **A/N** : I'm going to put this here and beg the indulgence of the reviewer that initially broached the subject. It's not my intent to call anyone out for sharing their impressions, which I think many will sympathize with, at least to some degree. It's a legitimate concern and it deserves to be addressed.

So. Yes, I imagine Kate has entertained a passing thought about sleeping with Logan. Don't we all think about sex when we're around someone we're attracted to? That doesn't mean it's ever gonna happen or even that we genuinely want it to. Biology influences us. It does not rule us utterly. I think it's been made pretty clear who Beckett agonizes over and worries about within her heart. Now, if getting distracted here and there renders every example of her concern, care, and shameless attraction for Rick so meaningless as to be casually discarded...well, that's a bit much. At that point, you're no longer reading my story. You're writing your own version atop it.

We all do that to some degree, of course. I sure do. It's not my intent to chastise. After all, it's no accident that you're concerned, now is it? What I will say, though, is that I can only tell my version of this or any story. The one you tell yourself based on the platform I provide...that's up to each of you. Make it a good one if you can.

While we're here... Let me add this woefully belated and narrowly related word of caution, because I don't want there to be any further confusion about my particular style of storytelling. There are plotted scenes that lay ahead, in Apprentice and in either one or two more tales slated to follow it, that are going to be a lot harder to read than a few brief exchanges with one good-looking mercenary. I loooove a lot of the fluffier stories some of the other writers here have concocted about this show, but I rarely feel compelled to write them. I crave darkness to balance the light. These characters are going to struggle dearly under my care. They will face the mostly-AU-pasts I've given them. They will confront temptation in more than one of its guises. And unless I completely miss the mark along the way, you will have cause to doubt them. Shout at them. Shake your goddamn phone or computer screen and rail at them. I'm going to rip their hearts out and I imagine some unpleasant part of me will smile while I do it.

But we will get to the finish line if you're inclined to endure alongside me. My hazy versions of the characters we love will get there, in a fashion. I don't promise 'happy' endings. This isn't a Disney classic. All I can promise is to try to make the journey worth the effort in the end.


	15. Chapter 15

Under the cold, pallid blue of LED flashlights, the muddied red of blood shone blackish. It was _everywhere_. Spattered in fine mists, slung in erratic slashes, and lathered across the floor in long streams that tapered like the tails of comets. It strung across grey metal lockers and wooden benches bolted to the floor between rows. It climbed walls of white tile that yielded halfway up to more concrete blocking. The paint of the latter, though dimmed to dingier hues by age and grime, shone brighter by grisly contrast. It was almost radiant. Almost aglow, as if clinging to some latent charge imbued by the carnage.

The shower section was accessed by a wide opening in the locker room's north wall. It was unmistakable as being the start and end for most of the violence. Desperate last flights were still perceptible where they occurred between the two areas.

Crime scenes she worked typically lent themselves to a narrative. That didn't guarantee logic or sense, but it at least implied the existence of such. Obscene implications of motive were often present. Beckett had never encountered its match. The kill room was impersonal chaos unleashed.

She wasn't even aware of the minute trembling which jiggled her vest-mounted light.

"Stay with me, Beckett."

Baritonal depth was unnervingly compounded by subterranean acoustics. By that and the unfamiliarity of the accent it bore, the voice of her companion struck the detective as belonging to a disembodied presence, as though the room itself had spoken. _Stay with me, Beckett. Forever._

A more violent shiver rippled outward from her core.

With an effort, Kate forced herself a mental half-step past the surroundings and, after mustering enough saliva to manage it, asked, "You're the ballistics expert, right? What do you see?"

Logan took his time before answering, continuing a slowly walked curve at the fringes of concentrated gore until he occupied a position at her far left. At some point he'd detached the torch from his vest to direct its beam more selectively. "Devastation. Hysteria. Mercilessness." Each intonation struck clearly for being isolated by individual consideration. "Medium caliber bores," he continued while leaning closer to study one of the bullet holes punched in the tile. "Ah'd guess Luger-nines."

"Huh?"

"Nine-by-nineteen parabellums. Notice the scarcity of impact points? Whadda we 'ave here? A couple full clips worth by mah count. Nowhere near 'nough tah account fah the carnage in the pool, not even if ya assume some rounds remained lodged in the victims."

Beckett turned to direct her light across the area again. "Hmm. Got some possible congruence to that. Once you get past the shock of its spread, there doesn't seem to be as much blood as there ought to either."

"Not the kill room aft'ah all."

"It was for plenty of those people," the detective pointed out. "There's also the locker room Bielsa and Hoffman are checking. Maybe they split their victims into separate groups." She paused after saying so. _They_. It seemed like a safe assumption for the time being, but a simple change of pluralization brokered a whole slew of questions she wasn't accustomed to asking in her cases.

"Ah dun think so."

Beckett frowned. "Why not? That's a lot of bodies. You wouldn't be able to fit them all in here at once. Well, maybe you could, but you wouldn't be able to maintain control. No one who was marched into a room like this would have any illusions about what was happening to them." She forced the words past her lips and out of her mind before they could conjure much accompanying imagery. "Look at the castoff patterns. Some of the victims tried to flee. Maybe some even fought back. If that were the case with all of them, someone would have gotten away."

"How do we know they didn't?" The other shook his head before she could reply, adding, "Ah think we need a clos'ah look at the bodies. Let the dead speak for 'emselves. Wager they'll tell us plenty. Ain't nothin' else tah see in 'ere." The mercenary didn't wait for her to agree or fail to before making his way to the entrance leading back to the main pool area.

As gruesome of a scene as the locker room proved to be, it was harder to leave than it had been to enter. The absence of any meaningful answers made it feel like Kate was ducking out for her own benefit as she accompanied her fellow. It felt like they were abandoning the place prematurely.

Castle would have perceived more if he were with them.

 _I owe you big time, Kirkland. Keeping him far from here was the right call._ Part of her relief was for the author's sake but she was grateful on her own behalf too. She wasn't prepared to hear whatever story he'd tell on behalf of a room like that.

In the interim of the others' detour, the M.E. and CSU technician had discarded their helmets and tac vests and laid out some of their gear. Two tripod-mounted crime-scene lights were erected near the swimming area. The spill of yellow-white luminescence over the mound of corpses brought Kate to a rigid halt.

Forewarning counted for almost nothing.

The mass grave was surreal. Isolated limbs protruded here and there, hands and feet frozen in what looked like static attempts to wave for assistance or kick towards freedom. The cadavers were in poor condition. Most still bore a version of mummified flesh. It clung, splotched and discolored, like brownish leather pulled taut across the jut and curve of bone. The influence of the storm was already becoming apparent. It was rendering bodies near the waterline into pallid, rubbery-looking mockeries of humanity. The worst affected were sloughing off their skin as if it were an ill-fitting costume. It looked like they were melting off the bone and into one another, fusing into a single pitiful entity.

The horror blurred beneath a sudden gush of scalding tears.

Bielsa and Hoffman returned from their exploration across the way. The ranking ESU agent hissed at the sight to greet them. "Who the hell gave you two the all-clear to set up shop?! _Dios mio._ "

Lanie and Joseph paused in their respective tasks and looked at each other.

"Aren't we on the clock?" the latter asked.

"More than we knew," the M.E. answered. She looked up at where the ceiling was caved in. Hazy light shone centrally from the foyer above, but it's influence was meager. Dimness forbade clarity beyond occasional glimpses of splintered beams, broken pipes, and squashed sections of ventilation. Several streams of water poured in through the gap and were spattering against the pool bottom. "I don't think there's going to be much left here after the storm passes."

"This thing is huge," Hoffman stated dubiously with a turning glance over the cavity. His gaze and the play of his flashlight beam studiously avoided the mass at its middle.

The medical examiner looked at Joseph.

"Uh. It depends," the younger doctor hedged. "Our region isn't typically subject to high levels of rainfall, comparatively speaking. There have been instances of forty to fifty inches of rain in the southern states from a single hurricane, which is enough to fill, say, ten million or so pools of this size."

"Whoa," Beckett spouted.

"Yes, well, that isn't what we tend to be subjected to. Far from it. Combine that with the fact that Harbinger is technically a nor'easter, a storm of mid-latitude origin—"

"Just give us a number," Bielsa interjected with an impatient sigh.

"An approximation is all I could hope to offer. But," he added hurriedly when the woman scowled, "if we compare it to similar storms in the past… Actually, that's a bit tricky. Nor'easters typically produce snow rather than rain, and while the conversion between the two is rather simple, there are variables dependent upon the type of snowfall. It's moisture content, for example." He stopped upon noticing that the group as a whole had taken to frowning at him. "We might expect anywhere between three and eight inches of rain from Harbinger."

"That's not so bad," Hoffman said. He looked around at the others. "Is it?"

Dr. Hawkins arched an eyebrow. "One inch of rainfall within the dimensions of a single acre produces upwards of one hundred tons of water. That's a little under thirty-thousand gallons. If the total precipitation in this immediate area doesn't exceed six inches, you're still looking at enough to fill this pool to almost the one-quarter mark of its six-foot depth."

"It's underground though," Hoffman pointed out.

"Mm," Hawkins hummed ponderously. "A fair point, yes. I was being irresponsibly optimistic. This island's surface area has been graded by three separate pre-construction phases. It's nearly flat. Low points like this sub-level could potentially accrue several other surrounding acres worth of runoff. Gravity works against us."

"I-I thought underground would be better," Hoffman corrected apologetically.

"Ah. Er…"

"That's not even taking into account Hurricane Dell," Lanie said with a look at Bielsa. "The last storm analysis I saw placed it only twenty-six hours behind Harbinger."

"It also doesn't factor in storm surge," Hawkins tacked on. "We're sitting squarely in the middle of a full moon. If the last-known timeline holds, both Harbinger and Dell will be making their respective landfalls at or around high tide. Quite unfortunate. Waves are likely to exceed NoBro's seawall. It's not unrealistic to imagine that some of them, the worst, might prove capable of striking the west edge of the island and making significant headway inland across its breadth."

"You guys, I think you've made your point," Beckett intervened. "Do what you have time to do."

"Putrefaction has sealed the bodies together almost like glue," the M.E. reported with a shake of her head. "There isn't much we _can_ do. We'd need scaffolding and a small-scale crane to lift them apart from one another one-by-one while someone else slowly separates the tissues to avoid causing damage."

"Well, we don't have a goddamn crane, Lanie."

Dr. Parrish sent her a sharp look.

 _Ah, shit. Nice one, Katie._

Her besty's plump lips conformed to a checked line of anger. She took a breath, snapped her attention back to Joseph, and said, "Keep taking samples. DNA might be the only way we end up having to identify them. I'll photograph. Grab a headset. We'll have to notate together as best we can while we work."

"Hoffman, take the east doorway," Bielsa ordered tiredly. "I've got west. Beckett—"

"I stayed behind to help out here," the detective interrupted. She touched lightly at Lanie's right shoulder. An immediate stiffness invaded before the M.E. cast a blank look to the side at her. "That's what I'm gonna do. If you can still use the extra pair of hands?"

"Hands," Lanie stipulated back at her. "I've got no use for that mouth."

Beckett snorted before she could check herself.

The other woman smiled weakly and bent to retrieve a camera that sat atop its hard-plastic carrying case nearby. It was a bulky digital one. She tugged a pair of blue latex gloves out of a box of them and offered those as well. "We don't need scaling. Rather, we don't have time for it. Just keep taking shots. Get me a wide angle of a victim first and then any zoomed captures. It'll help keep track of where to look for closer examination later. I hope," she added with a sigh. "Um, we're looking for wound sites or any other candidates for COD. They might be difficult to discern at this point, so grab a shot of anything that looks hinky. I'm not seeing much at first glance," she mused aloud with a look over the horrible pile-up. "We can't rule out a chemical or biological agent. Don't touch them, okay?"

"Ten-four."

"And leave your helmet on, honey. The wind must be gaining momentum up top. It's been kicking branches and other loose debris down through the hole. Logan, she's gonna need help getting in and out of the pool."

"Thanks a bunch," Beckett muttered privately, and her besty gave an unabashed wink.

 _Revenge is an ugly thing._

As the M.E. and her CSU counterpart resumed their respective tasks, the detective advanced to where Logan already waited near one of the ladders affixed to the pool's side. Bielsa joined them there to scour the piles of debris below with a distrustful eye. Some of the conical formations were several feet high. Her flashlight beam sent shadows lurching and swooping like massive, startled birds.

"What'd you find in the other locker room?" Beckett asked the ESU agent.

"Nothing. Scattered junk. You?"

Kate exchanged a look with Logan.

"Ah'll explain," the mercenary rumbled and nodded toward the pool. "Go'on ahead."

The detective clambered awkwardly down the rungs and levered herself from its bottom step with her lower half dangling She didn't attempt dipping into full extensions of her arms overhead for a lesser fall distance. Even stopping halfway hurt. With a grunt, the detective dropped to the pool bottom. Ankle-deep water splashed up around her calves and thighs. The chill fluid was murkier than what streamed in from above. It was brownish and soupy with a malignant viscosity. The surface looked oily. It shone under her light with faint whorls of iridescence that shifted amidst ripples of disturbance.

The stench of rot was almost dizzying.

Logan bent to one knee and held the camera and gloves down to her. He rose in the wake of the exchange and gave the area a searching look. "Ah'm gonna see 'bout findin' an extension for the ladder. They oughta have a few stored somewhere in 'ere. Ah won't be far. If you need outta there quickly, you jus' holler an' ah'll be back 'fore ya can spit."

He held her gaze solidly until Kate responded with an acknowledging, "Okay."

Bielsa kept pace as the mercenary stepped away. The low murmur of their conversation was quickly drowned out by the reverberations of waterspouts ushering in rainfall.

It seemed as though the same forces of chance working so diligently against them had initially favored an attempt at justice. The most recent cave-in had yielded plenty of impediments to Kate's footing but most of it had fallen beyond the bodies. The result was a little bewildering. A first-glance flight of fancy sealed in the image of a pair of massive hands sheltering the victims beneath cupped clasps of protectiveness while the upstairs had crashed down around them.

 _You're looking for an act of mercy where there was none._

The flash of the camera was powerful. It whined softly amidst each quick recharge. The stark whiteness it lent each body was gut-wrenching. Being there to help didn't lessen the sense of intruding upon the sanctity of the grave. _I'm sorry._ Gaping, empty eye sockets drilled against at the flimsy veneer of her composure. _I'm sorry._ Skeletal mouths hung wide in an unending chorus of agony. Soundlessness didn't stop her skin from prickling. The detective could almost feel what wasn't audible. _I—I'm so sorry._

Beckett made her way haltingly around the larger base of the pile, snapping images as she went. It was difficult to tell what parts belonged to which corpse, or what might be injury or the result of decay. She stated as much to the pair working above, but Lanie's reply was to just keep capturing what she could.

The observations being recorded above were terse and littered with medical jargon that the detective couldn't decipher. Most of it seemed to concern establishing times of death. One instance she overheard in which the two swapped to plainer language was enough to make Kate wish they hadn't.

"I'm feeling a bit out of my depth here," Joseph stated in low tones. "I've never actually seen this level of premortem damage. Look at them. Their toes are curled. Their hands are fisted." He stopped, stripped off one of his gloves and glasses, and wiped a palm down sweaty and rain-slicked features. "Few wound sites I've found would pose immediate lethality. These injuries weren't about causing damage. They maximized pain. These people were tortured. To death in some cases. I bet if we opened them up we'd find vascular and circulatory collapse from prolonged exposures to autonomic chemicals. COD in most cases would be stress-induced ventricular arrhythmias that led to cardiac arrest."

"I'm not interested in betting or guessing. You're in my world today, Hawkins, and it's built on facts. Keep working. And keep your voice down." Beckett spared an upward glance at Lanie's face, only half apparent in the gloom, which revealed the same unease in the CSU technician's tone.

 _What the hell have we stumbled upon down here?_

"Detective, may I have your assistance?" She lowered the camera and stepped around the base of bodies to see Joseph leaning outward from the pool edge, tentatively grasping the shoulders of one of the corpses. "Can you reach from below? Push between the shoulder blades if you can. I'm," he paused with a grunt of effort, "I'm trying to turn her a little to your left."

Grimacing, Beckett allowed the digital camera to drape by the cord about her neck. By stretching onto the tips of her toes she managed to provide some added pressure.

She almost tumbled forward into the pile of rotted flesh when the body tore loose with a sickening sound and a sudden plume of dark particles. A windmilling of the detective's arms arrested the momentum. Steadiness had barely been reclaimed when an ear-splitting alarm sounded to life and filled the area by single-second bursts. It was so jarring she nearly fell over backward instead.

"What the fuck is that?!" she heard Bielsa shouting.

"I don't know!" Lanie called back. "Joseph—

"Shit!" the CSU tech interrupted shrilly. "VOC alarm! Get out!"

The high-pitched command for evacuation overrode any and all confusion. The painful shrieking hardly registered over the pounding of Beckett's heart as she churned out a sluggish retreat from the pile and back through labyrinthine heaps of ruin. Amidst her urgency, they appeared far less steady constructs. She flinched inwardly while passing them by, expecting at every turn for something to fall through the hole above and send the ungainly towers careening down upon her. Each awkward lunge forward was stymied and sucked at by the diseased-looking water. Impediments beneath the surface rolled underfoot. Beckett swore aloud when one of them sent her tripping forward. She heard the panic in her voice. A secondary flash of the same sensation pitched and rolled in her stomach like a hunk of solid ice upon seeing the pool edge above unoccupied.

"Logan, go!" she heard Hoffman bellow. But the mercenary appeared into view instead. Dimly lit, unholy in all black and a compliment of deadly weaponry, he nonetheless shone to Beckett like a winged godsend. He dropped onto his stomach with his arms lowered just as she reached the wall and used her remaining speed to kick off and up.

A supercharged rush of exultation greeted his gloved hands snapping closed around hers.

 _Gotcha!_

Then all the world flashed white and agony blasted outward across her sternum and chest. The sharp resistance and sensitivity imposed by scarring and freshly mended tendons and bone felt like being shot for a second time. Kate tried to scream as she was pulled aloft and couldn't. There wasn't enough breath in her lungs and no fresh supply was manageable. A tight and fierce ache crackled through her jaw, shot wide in the attempt of uncooperative sound.

Without pause after the terrible hoist, she was dragged bodily, lifted—ushered. Through a storm of fiery specks exploding before her field of vision, Beckett glimpsed her legs moving clumsily beneath her. All sense of computation or direction was lost.

The blackness of the double-door entrance startled her when it appeared, but recognition of the choked confines of the west hallway spurred her to action. She instinctively threw herself toward it and tore free from the unprepared grasp of the mercenary. The rough landing dazed her, but Kate sucked in a sob of relief to feel its unyielding solidity under her. Dry land at last.

Mercifully, awareness returned by swift leaps and bounds from there. Looming, shifting blurs of darkness around her resolved into the shape of her companions.

"—the _fuck_ was that?" Bielsa was shouting again.

"VOC alarm," Joseph replied gaspingly, bent to one knee close by.

"Volatile organic compounds," Lanie clarified. "It's one of the warnings from the air quality meter we brought in with us. Something triggered it."

"Shit," Hoffman ejected in a strangled voice. "What's _that_ mean? A biological agent after all?"

"No," Joseph grunted.

"Something like that would've pinged sooner," the M.E. explained.

Gradually, the hallway quieted from urgent gasps for breath to more controlled rhythms. The outcry of the alarm was deactivated by then. Beckett had no clear recollection of the moment it ceased. Most of the path between the pool bottom and the door was a painful haze.

Lanie turned from the hall confines to the second sub-level doorway while sweeping several strands of wild hair back from her brow. She gazed aside at Dr. Hawkins. "What was it? Did you see?"

"I saw it," the other answered grimly. "Spores. Mold, I think. Some of it was kicked up into the air when Beckett and I pulled two of the bodies apart from one another. I've never seen that kind of concentrated growth before. It was like a carpet of pitch black."

"Oh man," Lanie said and backed another step away from the room's entry. "Black mold? Stachybotrys? That's not good. If there's black mold, there's going to be a host of others, probably at higher concentrations. What levels did it record?"

Joseph stood and unclipped a device from his waist that resembled a small walkie-talkie. Soft red light filled its little screen along with black digital numbers. He turned it upright for study, frowned with his gaze drifting to one side in calculation. His eyebrows arose. "Whoa. Ten million per cubic meter."

Lanie put a hand to her brow. "Holy shit."

"Dense, but that isn't inherently dangerous."

"Hey, how about you lay it out for the rest of us," Bielsa demanded. "What's the situation?" Ulan and Eamon's flashlight beams played over them from the stairwell. The glow and contrasting etch of shadow carved ferocity deeply into the ESU agent's face. "Are we in trouble or aren't we?"

"I...I can't say for certain. We probably aren't."

Dr. Parrish shook her head and faced Bielsa. "It's a problem in damp and decaying buildings like this. Sometimes there's mold. In rare cases, like this one, you'll find a species called stachybotrys chartarum, or black mold, which can be dangerous."

"Its growing on the bodies?"

"It likely grew elsewhere and settled on them after the more recent collapse," Joseph suggested.

"And now it's growing on them too," the M.E. concluded with a swift look at the other. "Listen, we might be fine. Not all colonies of black mold produce mycotoxins that make them dangerous, and some that do stop for reasons we don't fully understand."

"The problem is: we have no way of discerning which we're dealing with," her companion said.

"The problem," Lanie took over again firmly, "is that we've been disturbing the area simply by walking through it. The fungi's conidia and any toxins that might have settled after their initial release are getting kicked up into the air again. Worse than that is all of this rain. Satratoxin-H isn't soluble in water."

"Oh damn," Hawkins murmured. "That's true. I didn't think of—

"What the hell does that _mean_?" the Segreant demanded.

"It means," Lanie continued patiently, "we've been getting dripped on by potentially contaminated water ever since we entered the hospital. We could be lathered in it at this point."

"Wha-what does this shit do? Are we gonna get sick?"

The medical examiner chewed one edge of her lower lip. "I can't answer that. I'm no mycologist, and to my limited knowledge of the subject the science itself is somewhat hit-and-miss. Infection varies depending on factors that aren't entirely clear. There have been clinical studies done with rats that were exposed to high concentrations of black mold over a much longer timespan and they didn't show any negative symptoms. But there are other cases where—

" _Mierde_ ," the ESU agent snarled. "The short version, _por favor_. Assuming the worst."

"There's no reason to assume the worst," Joseph interjected, and this time Lanie nodded in agreement. "Your body can mimic becoming symptomatic simply by allowing yourself to dwell on the matter from that kind of extreme mindset. We don't even know for certain what species of mold it really is. It does _appear_ to be stachybotrys chartarum, but that's still only a guess. There's no cause for alarm."

"Someone needs to answer my question right fucking now," Bielsa seethed with her jaw clenched. The demand was made all the more concerning from the way she clenched the grip of her weapon. Hoffman rose away into a wary, straighter stance at her side. "What does it _do_?"

Logan looked at Beckett and arched an eyebrow.

 _Yeah, I see it. Hard not to._

Their civilian counterparts exchanged glances as well.

Lanie hesitantly replied, "Symptoms run a pretty extensive list of candidacy. It could be as innocuous as epidermal disturbances like rashes or sores. Our eyes might redden and itch. Or we might experience headaches, nosebleeds, or nausea. It could be all of the above and more, like excessive weariness and soreness. Respiratory and circulatory issues have been documented. It can cause hyperthermia, chest pain, and even pulmonary hemorrhaging—uh, bleeding in the lungs. Satratoxin-H is also neurotoxic. That introduces elements of psychological distress like sudden onset depression and erratic changes in mood or cognitive processing. In extreme cases, people have experienced hallucinations. It can wreak havoc on the immune system, thereby inviting a wide host of other illnesses."

"Holy fucking hell," Hoffman expelled softly. He took the words right out of Beckett's mouth.

Neither of the doctors had used the specific word, but death was firmly implied as a possibility. For a moment, Beckett was back in the Nurse's dormitory with the stench of rot seeping out from behind its walls. _Was it there too? Was Castle exposed?_ It wasn't the same as squaring off against an enemy she could outwit or outgun. The thought of getting sick and losing more time, perhaps all of what remained to her, evoked a unique chill of helplessness and apprehension.

Logan asked, "Y'all don't think we're actually in for that kinda trouble, do ya?"

"There is absolutely no reason to assume so," Joseph stated firmly. "Even assuming the mold here is toxic, the team's occupancy has been brief and we've disturbed little of the environment. Our cautious advance in the interest of stealth has served us well in this additional respect. Bear in mind: the listed symptoms occur over time and in the absence of treatment, the latter of which is readily available as soon as we get back to the mainland. We're going to be fine."

A quick glance at Lanie's neutral features didn't add much support for his optimism.

"However," Dr. Hawkins continued with a nod, "in light of the rain and its potential complications by way of exposure risks, I agree with Dr. Parrish. It would be wise to leave. We'll have to return after the storm has passed with the appropriate safeguards."

Hoffman grunted. "That's music to my ears. Whaddaya say, Sarge?"

Sergeant Bielsa was noticeably pale. Her dark eyes were still fastened to the doctors before her but the woman's actual focus seemed to have outpaced their presences. By miles.

"Sarge," Hoffman reiterated with a nudge of his elbow into her right side.

The female ESU agent startled back to awareness. Her wild eyes swept from Lanie and Joseph to Hoffman and back again. She swallowed thickly, wiped the back of one hand across her brow. "Y-yeah. _Si._ Let's...let's go." She took a fortifying breath. "Hell yes, let's go. Fuck this _isla de corrupción_."

A chorused rumbling arose in unanimous agreement. No translation needed.

"Hoffman, uh, take point. Beckett—

"Already on it," Kate assured while tuning her radio to the second team's frequency. It might only be the hospital that was rotten within, but the site the other team was headed toward—the tuberculosis pavillon Rick had called it—was just as old and neglected. A word of warning now ought to safely precede their arrival. She followed after Lanie and Joseph with Logan bringing up the rear. "Kirkland, call back on," she paused to check the frequency lights for availability and stopped in her tracks.

"Whoa," Logan issued, pausing after a near collision against her back.

A small green light identified open channels. Blinking designated those that were occupied and receiving traffic. All of the indicators on her radio were showing solid red lights.

"I'm offline. What gives?" She started to announce as much to their agent in charge, but Bielsa was already frowning and slapping her radio against an open palm. The admittedly inane attempt of repair didn't furbish a positive result, evident by the fact that the woman marched determinedly ahead to where Ulan and Eamon were waiting. The others hustled along in her wake.

"Are you up on coms?" she snapped without preamble.

"Negative," Eamon answered for the twins. "They've been down for ten minutes or so."

Bielsa scowled and gestured sharply back the way they'd come. "You didn't see fit to share that information when it happened?"

"Thought you knew," the emerald-eyed giant returned evenly. It was a fair assumption, but it didn't take into account the terrible authority the pool and locker rooms imposed by way of distraction. "It's—" Eamon paused when the group was bathed by two quick flashes of light shone down from what looked to be the hospital's ground floor. The signal was echoed afterward by a pair of flashes from the team on the level directly above. The pattern was blinked back upward by Ulan even as his brother reported, "No contact. We're still clear, just dark."

"Shit," Bielsa muttered.

"Is the storm already that bad?" Lanie asked.

The question brought on a spell of silence rather than an answer. Within the lack, the pounding rain was audible above. Insistent gusts whistled through narrow gaps and moaned its way through larger architectural weak spots. Loose debris was being scattered around, even tumbling down with occasional clatters into the room they had recently exited. It sounded busy up top but not ferocious as yet.

"What's the procedure in the event of communication loss?" Dr. Hawkins asked at length. "Is Kirkland going to stop and backtrack to us?"

"Maybe. Maybe not given the time crunch," Bielsa answered, her expression uncertain. "We were expecting to be here for an hour or more. He might assume he has time to continue on and make it back before we'd be ready to leave."

"We sure as hell don't want to go and risk missing them in this storm," Hoffman assessed worriedly. "It sounds worse than when we came inside at the very least. By the time Kirkland comes here, realizes we left, and continues on to the ferry landing, we could be facing trouble on the river. That big bitch of a boat has power, but it isn't nimble. We're close to the hellmouth and surrounded by shallows."

Lanie looked at Kate with a flash of concern. Yeah. Their prior conversation about taking an unsought dip in near-freezing water was intruding at the forefront of the detective's mind, too.

"No," Bielsa decided firmly. "If their radios also went down, Kirkland would come back. He'd do it if only to avoid a fuck-up."

"That sounds right to me, too," Beckett agreed. "He'd put safety first."

"Alright. Docs, what kind of exposure are we risking if we maintain a position in the foyer near the front doors while we wait for the other team to come back?"

"We can take another reading once we're there," Lanie suggested. "But it'll be a lot better. There's very little ventilation down here. That's why the number is so high."

"Fine. Let's move it," Bielsa said grimly.

* * *

A/N: Surprise.

Yeah, I goddamn refuse to give up on this. It just can't be allowed. I wanna send out a quick thank you to readers who've intermittently prodded at me. I do savor these moments of answering you guys with a little showing versus telling. A grander round of appreciation is owed to our peer on the site, Stratan, who is capably and generously braving a stormy sea of typos and grammatical errors (and maybe a couple of spoilers) as my beta. Thank you again. Simply discussing things together brings the fire beneath this tale back to life. I hope time and opportunity lets us see this through the rest of the way together. It would be a better story for it.


	16. Chapter 16

**3:17 PM  
** **North Brother Island, NYC**

"I'm not gonna make it," the M.E. panted, pausing in her ascent with her head drooping toward her chest. She sucked down a few breaths and glanced back at Kate. "You've gotta go on without me, honey. Tell my family I love them, okay?"

The detective used the delay to remove her helmet and swipe a palm backward from her brow, combing away errant tendrils of damp hair. "Lady, if you're gonna keel over, don't you dare do it in front of me. Your body would be blocking the stairs and dooming me, too."

"Going out together. That's so romantic."

"I mean, if I gotta go, and the last thing I see simply must be someone else's booty? I'm glad it's yours." She reached up and goosed the medical examiner, adding throatily, "Baby got back."

The woman above swatted blindly backward at the offending pincher without effect. "You filthy beast. Why you gotta ruin our special moments?"

"Oh, I'd ruin that alright."

A silvery, solo blip of laughter escaped the woman above, a thing gasped to freedom past exhaustion and tempered to brevity by recent horrors but shining and genuine nonetheless. The chime of humor spiraled above and below. It echoed swiftly back by strange acoustics that morphed the note of play into something more akin to an outcry of pain or alarm.

The pair locked gazes even while their expressions froze and sank back toward the grimness which pervaded around them. Lanie turned to front and continued up the shifting, groaning staircase. They reached the first floor without incident and stepped off to one side past the others already accumulated there. Continuing squeals signaled Joseph and Logan beginning their ascent.

A handful of upward-spiraling turns was all it had taken to go from pitch black to muted daylight. There weren't enough steps to escape above the sense of exploring a nightmare. Odorous tinges of filth still clung to the detective's pant legs and boots after sloshing through the pool. Everyone bore some taint of decay. Welcome relief moaned through the halls, scattering loose detritus and ushering in scents of rain-soaked flora. Even Sergeant Bielsa, who stood nearby with her brow still furrowed and her lips compressed with impatience, looked a little more at ease amidst the gusts of cleaner atmosphere.

Following a few uninterrupted moments to settle them both, Beckett regarded her besty, waited for the lasting connection of her focus, and asked, "You wanna take me through it?"

Lanie didn't need clarification. The two had spent years employing their ritual. The doctor knew how hotly the 'whys' of any homicide scenario burned within the NYPD officer—that need to know the story. Likewise, the investigator was aware that her friend sought moments like the one upon the stairs to smile or otherwise celebrate the living before delving into death. "We didn't get much," she cautioned.

"We knew it was a cursory inspection before leaving the twelfth. No time. No lab or personnel. I'm not asking for what you can't give, only for your impressions based on what you saw."

The other's dark eyes shifted downward as if peering through architectural layers. "DC Alvarez was correct during our meeting earlier; we're looking at a series of mass murders. My preliminary hypothesis is that the killings included somewhere between ten and twenty victims per series and that each series occurred several months apart. It could be a wide enough gap to make them annual events. If that's the case, the grave represents somewhere between four and six years of...effort."

The overabundance of evidence furnished zero ease when it came to reconciling the scenario to its location. The bustle and din of New York City surrounded NoBro, hardly more than a stone's throw away in every direction. It was the most populous urban sprawl in the country with the largest police presence and one of the busiest ports. Multiple branches of armed forces and intelligence agencies maintained offices or bases nearby. The Big Apple was a sieve in many respects too, of course, but there was a huge difference between the usual crimes that went unnoticed and multiple mass murders.

"H-how—" Beckett stopped to reorient and tried again. "Think about where we are."

"Believe me, I have been."

They went silent and shuffled farther into an interior corner of the room as the current pair left the staircase. Joseph glanced their way but kept his distance when the M.E. shook her head once in mute forbiddance. Ulan and Eamon, the final pairing below, began noisily making their way up.

"Immigrant smugglers," Kate ventured aloud at length and repeated herself more audibly when the words were swallowed up beneath the driving rain. "I've heard a few horror stories about this kind of thing with coyotes, mugalari, and snakeheads. Someone can't pay or they almost get caught mid-transport. They drop cargo and don't leave any witnesses."

"It's possible, honey, but it seems unlikely. For one thing, this is a very out-of-the-way place to get rid of evidence. More importantly, there are a lot of ethnicities present down there."

"There's no racial bias?"

Lanie hesitated, shrugged. "There were more Caucasians than anything else, but that doesn't mean much. They still could've come from anywhere in the world. The quality of dental work and few old surgical sites seem to confirm as much. That line of thinking does bring up one odd detail: there's a marked disparagement regarding gender. Twenty, maybe even thirty-to-one in favor of females."

"Oh, damn. That sounds like the nonconsensual side of the same coin: human trafficking."

"I'd agree if it weren't for the way most of them suffered before they died."

"Tortured," the detective recalled aloud with a wince.

"Extensively, yeah. I've seen stuff like this before." The M.E. paused as if dragged to a halt by the referenced memories and cleared her throat. "Wound patterns and their prevalence at especially sensitive areas of the body reveal the hand of an experienced practitioner. It's strange because while I did see the kind of carefully considered damage I'd expect from a professional, I also noticed amateurish attempts of the same on other bodies. It's contradictory data. If I didn't know better, I'd think we were looking at victims that had been used to teach a classroom of extreme interrogators their trade."

"I agree that sounds far-fetched, but why do you consider it unlikely?"

"Interrogation specialists are trained on cadavers in safe, laboratory conditions."

"Oh. Wait, how the heck do you know _that_?"

"When I was still in medical school, a company that provides those services attempted to headhunt me and a couple of other candidates. They explained some of what was involved in the craft at the time."

"Are you serious? Jeez." Beckett shook her head with a grimace. "Sometimes I forget there's an actual industry built around that shit."

Her companion arched an eyebrow in turn. "I can appreciate your disdain towards the medieval concept of torture, honey, but don't fall into the mental trap others do. Modern intelligence gathering saves lives. Medical interrogations performed by a capable staff can yield positive results with minimal patient suffering, often without serious or lasting damage. The real thing isn't the same as what you read about in sensationalized news or history books. It's not like what we saw downstairs. In fact, getting physical is the first thing they teach you _not_ to do. Psychological destabilization and chemical stimulation are safer and far more reliable barrier breakers. Pain is admittedly effective at eliciting a response, but it's also dangerous for everyone involved and notoriously unwieldy."

"I'm sorry, hold up. Did you just lecture me about the fucking merits of torture?"

"No," the medical examiner fired crisply back at her, "I attempted to explain how real, everyday people with compassion and genuinely decent intentions go about an ugly task versus mindless adversarialism and still manage to sleep at night. But let's cut to the quick and spare ourselves an argument, okay? My point is the various applications of torture I observed downstairs don't imply a common or long-lasting goal in terms of information gathering. Do you understand?"

"I get it. But, no, I sure as shit don't understand."

Lanie sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her nose.

"What _does_ it suggest to you?" Beckett asked with less bite in her tone.

The other's hand arose from her brow in a weary, aimless gesture. "I don't know. Something else. People break under that kind of stress. It isn't a question of 'if but 'when'. That being the case, we should have seen injuries that taper off in intensity or frequency. That's not what happened. There's also no apparent commonality to our victims beyond the scope of gender, and even that much is an imperfect value. If they were all part of the same nationalized military or terrorist group, we could define them geographically and surmise that this was indeed a crude means of intelligence gathering. One that's methodically spanned the past several years. But they don't. Victimology is all over the place."

"Maybe they all worked for the same company or lived in the same area."

"Maybe, but wouldn't you expect to have heard about a company or community that lost dozens of people at a time? That'd be a big story—international news maybe. And would they still be in business or living together if the same mass disappearance occurred again and again?"

"Damn it," Beckett issued softly. "That makes me wanna lean back toward immigration. That's where you see big numbers of people like this minus a lot of chatter. I can't think of another victim pool that would allow such large subtractions to be made without creating a buzz or making headlines. It still wouldn't jive, I guess. Any smuggler who served up this many victims wouldn't be able to have done the same deed more than one or two times. No one would trust their services."

Lanie was silent, frowning pensively.

"There's the missing persons element."

"Huh?"

Beckett glanced to one side, lured by an especially deep groan from the stairs as the structure swayed and shuddered beneath the burden of the towering twins. It held. "We average over ten-thousand missing person cases a year. That's in New York City. The surrounding metropolitan area offers up even more in terms of a victim pool. Most of those cases are resolved within the first few hours, but plenty aren't."

"That number probably only accounts for documented citizens and reported cases, huh?"

"Mostly. It could be higher still, sure."

"I don't understand," the medical examiner said with a shake of her head. "Why the torture? Why dump them here of all places? Think about what that entails. You'd need a boat big enough to do the job, but subtle enough that it wouldn't stand out to the security patrols around Riker's Island."

"Shit," Beckett hissed in interruption. "Fuckin' Rikers."

"What?"

"Ah, I had the boys poking around there following another thread," Kate explained with some exasperation. "They were looking for traces of Finch's goddamn boat."

"So?"

"So, which seems more likely? That a group of suspects managed to sneak downriver and offload a boat full of corpses without being seen, or that they bribed their way through the security measures?"

"Beating the bushes on behalf of one lead might've startled a different kind of quarry," Lanie replied, catching on swiftly. "That'd be a helluva thing for someone to get involved in."

"They wouldn't necessarily have to be involved. If I gave you five-hundred bucks to turn your head and look the other way, are you going to ask me why? You wouldn't need the correct answer even if you did ask. I'd tell you—what? Drugs. Weapons. Something like that. That'd probably seem like a reasonable enough answer for someone willing to take the cash."

Lanie pursed her lips into a line of mute concession.

Beckett reached into her vest pocket for her cell phone but jolted to a halt when a blur of movement lurched at her right peripheral. It was only a tree bough, laden with dripping leaves, bending sharply in the wind beyond the shattered panes of a hallway window.

That single reminder of the island waiting beyond the hospital walls summoned the memory of pale grey, violet-flecked eyes, and deep crimson hair. She thought of the unknown youth they encountered in the woods earlier and saw again the arctic absence of fear or any other emotion staring back. Her skin prickled with fresh sensitivity. "This couldn't be the work of one person. That's impossible, right?"

Dr. Parrish studied her for a silent beat. "There are too many contradictory implications within each series of deaths for one suspect, let alone the mass grave in its entirety. Different wound patterns indicate various implements. Angling and depth speak to left and right-hand dominant perpetrators and also to contrasting sizes and strengths, or at least ferocity. Then there's the expertise we discussed regarding the torture itself, with familiarity showcased as well as its opposite. No. We're definitely looking at multiple killers. I don't wanna guess at a number. Just thinking about the potential sum makes me—

"Hey. Is everyone set?"

Kate turned along with Lanie to regard Sergeant Bielsa, who had moved to occupy the hallway entrance from the stairwell and was scowling expectantly back at the team. The slanted fall of daylight which bisected her figure was dispersed by a glaring splash of brightness. Distant thunder boomed across the tumultuous sky seconds later.

"Let's move," she stated without waiting for a negative answer.

Beckett's cell phone rang.

Everyone turned toward the chime in surprise. The detective winced and answered the call. "Go ahead," she instructed the others. "I'll bring up the rear with Ulan and Eamon." As they began filing out into the hallway she spoke into the phone, "Hello?"

"Beckett," an exasperated Esposito answered, "finally. What the hell's going on out there?"

"We were downstairs. Way down, I mean. No reception."

"Why isn't anyone on your team answering their radios?"

"Comms are down."

"Down? I'm in the war room looking at your live feeds as we speak."

"Then you oughta know it's down on our goddamn end. The storm, I guess."

"The storm? Nah. We're only a couple miles apart, max. Attenuation doesn't wreak that kinda havoc at this range on these frequencies."

"Javi, whadda ya want me to tell you? Better yet, why don't _you_ tell _me_ why you ca—

"What?"

"I said—

"Hold up, Beckett." She grit her teeth in annoyance but obliged. On the other end of the line, a woman's voice became audible raised in unintelligible agitation. "Beckett, tell Officer—which one? Tell Greene to turn ninety degrees right," he passed along by way of halting instruction.

"Greene," she called through the doorway. "Turn right. Your feed is showing them something—

"Oh shit!" Esposito cried. "Down! Get—

The warning was drowned out by an _eruption_ of automatic gunfire from multiple sources beyond the team's location. It shattered everything. The nearness of Harbinger's mindless wrath, all considerations of mass murder, any concerns for the brooding island itself: everything else was washed away.

* * *

A/N: Once again, I wanna give a quick shout out to Stratan for his continued support as this story's beta. I also wanna thank everyone for their comments and PMs. It's pretty rad to hear from y'all and to be sharing the same creative space again. Lastly, for anyone who missed my warning and stumbled off of that cliff at the end, sorry!


End file.
